Bald Eagle Record, 1000 Peregrine Year

[3 of the 9 Marbled Godwits seen on last night's CMBO Stone Harbor Point walk, with 2 sleeping Western Willets. An annoying Peregrine kept flushing the birds. I also hear 4 Tricolored Herons were seen. Photo by Karl Lukens, click to enlarge.]

Come to the hawk watch in the next few days and you can see the record-breaking Bald Eagle, because they are all record-breakers now. Eagle number 341 yesterday was the first to break the single-season record, and by day's end we were up to 353. What a success story that is.

Speaking of success, we've passed another milestone with 1,000 Peregrines for the season so far - that happened several days ago. The record is 1,793, set in 1997, a record we are not likely to break now, since though there are plenty of Peregrines to come we are past the peak for them. Hawk totals through yesterday are up on View from the Field.

The state park was pretty birdy this morning, with CMBO's walk garnering a nice list of 73 species. Karl Lukens noted in his report that there were more sparrows than usual, which jives with what I heard while listening in the dark along the bay. Of 400 flight notes in the hour before first light, aboout half were Yellow-rumped Warblers but most of the rest were sparrows - Song, Savannah, Chipping, Swamp and Field. No thrushes, one American Bittern, a few other warbler species. This was enough nocturnal movement to induce me to go to the dike before work just in case, but we fairly quickly concluded that "it" wasn't happening, it being a major morning flight. Birds were moving, but not thousands. Other state park birds included numbers of both kinglets, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Common Snipe, and American Pipits overhead. The rips had quite a few Northern Gannets and a couple Parasitic Jaegers this morning.