Yesterday, Jeannette and I ventured over to New Hampshire’s Pack Monadnock hawk watch near Peterborough. This is a very good fall hawkwatching sight, and this is the second year of full-time coverage there.

After spending the night in Nashua, we began the morning with a walk at McDowell Lake. A smattering of migrants were around, but nothing out of the ordinary. Most un-ordinary, however, was the view of a Pied-billed Grebe in flight. It briefly took flight, skimming the water’s surface as it crossed the center of the lake. While far from rare, Pied-billed Grebes are rarely observed in flight (they usually only fly at night while migrating, and rarely bother to take flight during the day, preferring instead to slip underwater to evade potential predators.

I did get some great photographs of a Double-crested Cormorant sitting on a rock, but since I once again left my camera at home, I’ll have to upload those - and other photos from the day – tomorrow.

We arrived at Pack Monadnock at about 10:30 and were greeted by strong westerly winds. Every hawkwatch site is different, and every one has better success on one wind direction over another. Unfortunately, Pack does not have a lot of success on west winds, especially ones this strong.

However, Jeannette and I thoroughly enjoyed a relaxing day of scanning the skies. It turned out that we had met Julie, the counter for this season, a couple of years back in Cape May. While there were not a ton of birds (47 while we were there), many – especially the late-day Sharp-shinned Hawks, were quite low. Two Bald Eagles and 2 Peregrine Falcons were nice to see.

In the calm, clear skies last night, a good passerine migration proceeded. I tallied 49 calls (the second most this season), in my ten minutes of listening. Many of these were thrushes, mostly Swainson’s. I hoped to ground-truth my thrush identifications from last night by seeing them this morning, but a walk at Hedgehog Mountain Park only yielded a single Wood Thrush – not a species that I though that I heard last night. One late Scarlet Tanager, and a few warblers were around, and three Black-throated Blue Warblers in my yard later in the morning was a treat.

Meanwhile, here we go again – reports have surfaced of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Florida.