Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch
Waynesboro, Virginia, USA
Daily Raptor Counts: Sep 14, 2006
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total
------------------ ----------- -------------- --------------
BV 0 0 0
TV 0 0 0
OS 18 40 46
BE 0 8 8
NH 3 5 7
SS 16 32 38
CH 0 4 6
NG 0 0 0
RS 0 1 1
BW 271 2868 2899
RT 0 14 19
RL 0 0 0
GE 0 0 0
AK 3 7 8
ML 0 0 0
PG 0 4 4
UA 0 0 0
UB 0 3 3
UF 0 0 0
UE 0 0 0
UR 0 2 2
Total: 311 2988 3041
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Observation start time: 10:30:00
Observation end time: 17:45:00
Total observation time: 6.92 hours
Official Counter: Multiple Counters
Observers: Brenda Tekin, Dave Hunter, Gordy Adamski, Jim Fitzgerald
Visitors:
Thanks to the counters and observers who showed up:
Bill Gallagher, Donna Lewis, Sarah Splaun, Sgen Fielding, Alice Davis,
Marilyn Gillaspi. Although not impressive BW numbers, the flight of Osprey
in a relatively short time was fun.
Davenports
Weather:
Clouds,fog and light rain early morning but things began to break up by 10
a.m. EST. With mostly cloudy skies breezy conditions (28-38km/h out of
the N) the birds were beginning to move. The heaviest concentration of
clouds seemed to be following down the ridge line (Isn't that always the
case!) and bulk of the days flight probably was going high over or
skirting around further to east or west wide of the ridge. Temp: 19.c
increasing to 24.5c; Humidity: 75% dropping to 53%; Bar.Pressure: 1012
dropping to 940 (need to check settings); Cloud Cover: Noted as partly to
mostly cloudy.
At 5:45pm EST, one large cloud over the north ridge extending out over
piedmont to the east. Winds had diminished considerably, down to 6-11km/h
and upper lever out of the north.
Raptor Observations:
Birds were way up there and several lost against the background of dark
gray clouds as system moved out towards E/ESE.During the first hour 12
OSPREY were counted. The peak Broadwing counts (EST):
11-12: 28;
12-1: 27; then things dropped to 5, 2 and O by 3pm. These birds were
probably flying high or around the last remaining clouds. By 5:50, sky
was clearing to the north and west and a single Northern Harrier was
spotted high in the sky a good distance to the NE with gray cloud as
backdrop. It flapped and moved along heading out over the piedmont to the
east. A few short minutes later, BW began to stream through, emerging out
of a thin veil of greyish brown mist, but still at least one to 2 glasses
off top of ridge.
Last hours count (4:50-5: 13); (5-5:25): 193 (consisting of several
waves including group of 34, 61, 28, 18)
Non-raptor Observations:
Common Nighthawk - 1 at 4:02 p.m.
Monarch Butterfly - 4
Predictions:
sunny
========================================================================
Report submitted by Brenda Tekin (bt8x@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch, VA information may be found at:
http://home.ntelos.net/~btkin/rockfish_gap_hawk_watch
You are subscribed to VA-BIRD. To post to this mailing list, simply send email
to va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe, send email to
va-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
