Well, the second week of the Bradbury Mountain Hawkwatch has been completed. I am very pleased with the total to date of 367 birds so far. A distant Black Vulture on Sunday was the “bird of the season” to date, but we’re really just getting started. 104 birds were tallied on Sunday, but then Lionel got completely skunked on Monday in 6 hours of observation. Well, at least the average of 52 birds a day for those two days was still very good!

The first number is the total for the second week of the count, Tuesday March 27th through Monday, April 2. The second number is the total for that species to date.

BLACK VULTURE (4/1): 1, 1
Turkey Vulture: 40, 67
Osprey: 6, 6
Bald Eagle: 6, 27
Northern Harrier: 5, 5
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 26, 30
Cooper’s Hawk: 11, 19
Northern Goshawk: 1, 3
Red-shouldered Hawk: 4, 21
Broad-winged Hawk: 0, 0
Red-tailed Hawk: 62, 147
Rough-legged Hawk: 0, 2
American Kestrel: 23, 24
Merlin: 2, 6
Peregrine Falcon: 0, 1
Unidentified: 4, 8
Week Two total: 191
Season-to-date total: 367

Week Three got off to a brutally slow start. I watched little else other than snowflakes from 9am to 11:30am today. In fact, the only birds I had in flight were local American Crows and commuting Herring, Ring-billed, and Great Black-backed Gulls. Singing Purple Finches, Brown Creeper, and lots of Dark-eyed Juncos kept me company however. Visibility came and went, but the winds were light. Unfortunately, they were out of the East. Lately, I have sometimes wondered why I left the field biologist life. Today, was one of those days when I wasn’t wondering! It reminded me far too much of the first week of the hawkwatch at Whitefish Point, Michigan – but not as windy, or my first couple of weeks at the Tussey Mountain Hawkwatch in Central Pennsylvania, but less cold and with fewer Golden Eagles.

Jeannette took over, and counted through 2:30pm. She broke our day-and-a-half scoreless streak with an adult Northern Goshawk. Although that was the only bird of the day, it was a heckuva good one. And, once again, I missed it!

Meanwhile, I was at home alternating between working and watching feeder birds while sipping some tea brewed from some freshly-dried Pineapple Sage. We keep our Pineapple Sage plants inside in the winter, to allow them to bloom in the late summer for migrant hummingbirds, and as an added bonus, we get free, tasty tea.

With light snow falling, and cold conditions, the feeders we really hopping. They sure beat the hawk count for the day!
Dark-eyed Junco: 40-50
American Goldfinch: 30-40
Mourning Dove: 8
Blue Jay: 4
Black-capped Chickadee: 4+
Purple Finch: 3
American Crow: 2
Hairy Woodpecker: 2
Downy Woodpecker: 2
Tufted Titmouse: 2
White-breasted Nuthatch: 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch: 2-4
Golden-crowned Kinglet: 2 (after spending all winter feeding on the ground below the suet feeder on scraps from the woodpeckers, these two have finally figured out how to feed directly from the suet cage. This is the first time I have seen kinglets on a suet feeder. They figured it out about 2 weeks ago, and are on it sporadically throughout the day since!
Fox Sparrow: 2 (never had more than one in the yard at one time before)

Meanwhile, you know I’ll be glued to the TV tonight, beginning at 8:30 – the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team is playing Tennessee for the National Championship tonight! After trouncing LSU in the Final 4, the RU women look to bring home the school’s second-ever NCAA Team National Championship, the and the first since the 1949 Men’s Fencing Team! Yeah, it’s been a long time for those of us who bleed Rutgers scarlet. In fact, although the women went to the Final 4 in 2000, the last time a Rutgers team played for a National Championship was when the Men’s soccer team lost to UCLA on penalty kicks as Alexi Lalas hit the crossbar. (For those of you – any of you? – who enjoy Rutgers trivia).