Dudes...I was on the phone with the RAZL this evening and this prompted me to step outside and try my luck while on the phone. I'm sure glad I did! I looked up and had a huge kettle of BWHA directly above me, I started counting and quickly had to ratchet my count up from 5 to 10 as I couldn't keep up with the volume of birds. I then looked east and west and had multiple other large kettles following different flight lines with just rivers of BWHA way up streaming overhead. The birds kept streaming over for another 25 minutes before slowing to a trickle around 6PM. Here's my checklists from this afternoon at my place. The first represents 30 minutes spent outside when I got home since I figured it was a good day to watch for raptors...
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S11620949
The second represents my count conducted only 30 minutes after I'd come inside from the first watch...
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S11621797
From 6 to 1030... Here are a few photos I got of some of the lower birds.
I like this one because you can see one of the higher flight line birds in the same frame.
A portion of one of the last kettles of the day.
5 of the 6 GREGs that went over, a salvage yardbird for 2012 (#84).
The SSHAs were also another yardbird (#83).
The BWHA total represents the largest total for the species I've ever seen in the midwest (by a huge margin...250 my previous single site high count in eBird). It is only slightly behind my life high count of 1200 from
Bentsen State Park in the LRGV of Texas.
Epic dude. Almost surprised you didn't make the SWHA-yardbirder list increase to 3!
ReplyDeleteI like how you tied me and put your ass above mine in the sidebar. Pretty bold of you there sonny boy.
ReplyDeleteLove the pics! Did you have to zoom way in on some of those are were they just that low?
ReplyDeleteTies go to the more recent score - this was established last year AABO. Not bold...confident!
ReplyDeleteI had my camera at 18x and then cropped in on the kettle shot. The single birds were much lower, but I didn't have large numbers that low. Just small numbers trickling over low while they poured over at high altitude.
I was trying to become the 3rd yard with SWHA and to have quality raptors in both my IL yards - that was my chance!
I want to contest this bogus rule. Ties should go to the yard the first to arrive at such number...
ReplyDeleteIt's in the yardbirds by-laws. To avoid this situation just don't let anyone tie with you!
ReplyDeleteGreat spotting Sean, but Boone is correct - ties go to the first one over the finish line.
ReplyDelete