Unofficial, Unsanctioned, Unqualified Hawk Watcher 8/14/2020

     A year ago yesterday Matt McConnell noticed a movement of Red-tailed Hawks passing over the city of Ludington.  The next day I drove up to vantage point at my work and saw 50 more migrate by in an hour. 

  Since then I have moved from a house in the woods to a lake house with a great expanse of sky.  I have been looking forward to the late summer raptor migration since the day we moved in. I spent a little while in the yard yesterday afternoon but only saw 1 Red-tailed, along with a Merlin and an American Kestrel (which was a new yardbird #137).  

   Today was a different story as I saw 138 migrating raptors.   I initally thought all the distant buteos were Red-tails but later when I reviewed the photos I noticed some were Broad-wingeds which were also new to the yardlist.

Redtail and Broadwing

                                               Red-tail and Immature Bald Eagle

Two Upper birds are Broadwings the lowest one is a Redtail.

   Seems whenever two Bald Eagles ride the same thermal one will have to remind the other to social distance.

   An Osprey was also an unexpected surprise. 

 

   Here are some photos from the last couple of days.

The Bluebirds are wreaking havoc on the local butterflies and moths....

They only laid two eggs in their new nestbox, after their first nesting effort was cut short when a storm blew down their previous box in June.  Only one egg has hatched.

Eagle with its lunch.

Yesterday's new yardbird.  American Kestrel

   What appears to be a monstrous Walking Stick......

......looks less formidable when placed on a more natural setting. 

Harlequin Duck - Now That's a Yard Bird 12/7/2019

   A crosstown move from a house on a mostly wooded acre to one on a larger lot with an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan, has already yielded a spectacular rarity in the form of an adult male Harlequin Duck.

  It's the first Harlequin Duck that I have found on my own and only the third that I have ever seen.  The other two were at my work a little over a mile up the road.

   Another benefit of the nearly treeless yard on the lake side of the house is that I can finally do some astronomy at home, rather than driving to the local state park.  The photo below shows the nearest spiral arm in our Milky Way Galaxy.  The skyglow on the right side of the frame is from my beloved employer, while the yellowish glow at the bottom of the photo is from my nearest neighbor to the west in WISCONSIN, 65 miles away.

   The next photo shows the constellation Orion rising over my house with the Pleaides star cluster near the top of the image.