Today was one of those days that will go down in my birding hall fame history. I accompanied my good friend, Kevin Rybczynski out to the Braddock Bay Raptor Research hawk watch in hopes of scoring a Northern Goshawk or Golden Eagle today. We must have arrived a bit early as the watch was yet to be manned, so we took advantage of our time and headed over to a place nicknamed, "Owl Woods," to see if we could possibly turn up a Long-eared Owl or Northern Saw-whet Owl. Having never been there before I eagerly searched every young coniferous tree, and not 15 minutes into our search did I come face to face with a Northern Saw-whet Owl. I can't begin to describe that feeling of discovery when your heart beat skips and your stomach drops to your feet, but I love it. It's one of the motivating factors that probably keeps most of crazy birders out there in freezing temps looking for who knows what to turn up. We took few a pictures and gave our nocturnal friend the space it needed to rest. We then headed out to look for a recently found Eurasian Wigeon after that and failed miserably. Freezing cold and dejected about the missing duck, we decided to check back at the hawk watch and met up with the friendly british hawk watcher, Luke Tiller and put our eyes to the sky. We turned up a few Red-shouldered Hawks, a Cooper's Hawk, multiple Northern Harriers, a few juvenile Bald Eagles, as well as couple Turkey Vultures. The awesome amount of non-raptor birds like Snow Geese, and various waterfowl at Braddock Bay was amazing as well. The weather and winds were below optimal for raptor migration, but any hawk watch is a good hawk watch. Not to mention, I finally... after an entire winter of chasing, scored my lifer Norther Shrike right from the Hawk Watch platform after talking about how badly I needed one. You just can't beat it. Unless of course I mention that we headed back to the area where the Eurasian Wigeon was spotted the day prior and put it over an hour in the freezing cold for some amazingly difficult looks at that incredibly rare lifer for Kevin! You really have to earn some birds! Braddock Bay is a must visit location if you even remotely enjoy birding. Birding at its finest! And without further adieu:
Rick BacherI like murderous birds and the things they kill. Archives
August 2015
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