While many people have been thrilled to add Ferruginous Hawk to their life and / or state lists, I have a different perspective. I've posted before about the Winter Raptor Survey that I've done covering the Black Dirt Region and the Wallkill Wildlife Refuge area. How fortuitous that the Ferrug showed up in the coverage area. But then why not? It's obvious to us and the raptors that it's a great area for raptors. So I moved this year's survey up a week or two from normal, hoping to get the Ferrug while the trail was still warm (and to take advantage of the extra eyes in the area -- thanks Adrian and Anne). I'm pretty sure it's the first Ferrug on an eastern WRS, but I'll check on that later.
WRS results and instructions on how to do one can be found at the web site of the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA - www.hmana.org <http://www.hmana.org> ). WRS is under Research & Conservation. Accessing results may require a logon ID, but discussion has been had to make it more public. So to make it easy, noteworthy numbers yesterday were 26 Red-tailed Hawks, 5 Rough-legged Hawks, 3 Red-shouldered Hawks, 9 Northern Harriers, 3 American Kestrels, and 2 Peregrine Falcons. It's actually the first time that I've recorded Red-shouldered here, making for 4 species of Buteo. That very well could be unprecedented on an eastern North America WRS (there are 5 species wintering in Florida, but habitat choice keeps them separated). One of the Red-shoulders is a rather tame (for the north) immature that was sitting on wires on Oil City Road, right at the parking lot at one point. Great photo ops if it continues. Only 3 Black Vultures were recorded in the survey area. But worth a mention that where I stopped to get breakfast in Chester, at routes 94 and 17M, there were at least 12 sitting on roofs in the shopping center. I've posted a picture of the Ferrug at my web site http://stevewalternature.com/ . The photo was taken from County Road 6 (Pulaski Highway). Steve Walter Bayside, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
