Trending upwards

After high winds these past few days, we seem to be entering a relatively calm period with light winds, mostly from northerly directions. Although not great for hawk migration, it is certainly an improvement over what we had, and this is borne out by the totals.

Today's count got to 54, a normal count for this part of the season. Almost half that number were Red-tailed Hawks, and for a good part of the day, all these redtails were on the wing simultaneously. Today's two Rough-legged Hawks did not mill around, but came up to the point and crossed, never to be seen again. Also today a few Turkey Vultures sauntering; note the adult bird pictured above molting its sixth primary in each wing.

Small groups of Sandhill Cranes were seen migrating across the point throughout the day; their total got to 142.

I expect to be getting higher numbers of hawks over the next few days, but a lot of them will likely be dots in the sky. Birds tend to go high on light winds...