Mount Lorette (14 Mar 2024) 178 Raptors

Visitors:
Only three people stopped to chat. Thanks to Ed McCullough for helping out through two of the peak hours. He turned up just before the main flight of eagles started, as if he had brought them with him.

Weather:
The temperature started at -5C, rose to a balmy 7C, and was 1C at the end. High cirrostratus clouds gave way to blue skies after a few hours, but by mid-afternoon the sky was clouding over again, first with cirrostratus clouds and then altostratus, with just a little bit of blue. There did not appear to be much ridge wind in the morning, judging by the lack of raptors and ravens that needed to flap to stay aloft, but by mid-afternoon the ridge winds must have picked up as the afternoon rush of raptors was flying high and fast.

Raptor Observations:
It was a slow morning with nothing moving. By 3:30pm we had seen just one Golden Eagle, just a brief glimpse low down on the west ridge, and we had little hope for seeing much more. Another one low on the west ridge gave more hope, and that was followed by four low down and circling around Mt Lorette. We thought we were in for an afternoon of watching for brief views of low flying eagles, but we were very mistaken in that! By 4pm we started seeing them flying high and fast above the east ridge; the flood gates had opened! We had 50 that hour, followed by 33 the next hour, then 61, and in the last hour, 19, with the last eagle a few minutes before sunset. A few on the west ridge kept us out of our seats so we could monitor both ridges, but most were gliding high and fast over the east ridge. At one point I had 11 soaring together in my binocular view, and six in scope view. All of the Golden Eagles that could be aged were adults, as expected for this time of year, with a total of 174 (152a, 22u). The three Bald Eagles (2a, 1j) seemed very out of place. Only one eagle could not be identified to species.
While this is a high number of eagles for early in the season, it is nowhere near a record, and not too unusual.
The local American Goshawk was seen hunting over Hummingbird Plume.

Non-raptor Observations:
Right before we got busy with counting eagles, a flock of 16 Bohemian Waxwings showed up and started fly-catching around us. Yes, they were catching insects at this time of year. However, their constant movement around us was more than a little distracting! Other birds were:
Ruffed Grouse 1, Hairy Woodpecker 1, Canada Jay 1, Common Raven 5, Black-capped Chickadee 1,

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