Mount Lorette (05 Nov 2025) 25 Raptors

Visitors:
16 people and 1 dog stopped to visit. Thanks to Gabriella, Jamie and Dennis who helped look for eagle for an hour.

Weather:
This morning’s temperature was minus 2 upon arrival at the site. By 13:00 it went up to plus 4, then dropped to 2 degrees in the late afternoon. There was very little scattered cloud in the morning, cirrus, cumulus and a few lenticular clouds which gradually grew in population and variety including stratus and nimbostratus. By mid afternoon the sky was completely covered in varying shades of gray. AS the afternoon progressed, the tops of Mt Kidd, Mt Bogart and Mt Lorette and all of Mt Allan were immersed in low clouds. To the south , the Opal range disappeared, and we could see snow accumulating on the higher parts of the eastern ridges and on Lorette. The wind was very light at ground level, starting from the west and south and switching to the north and east at end of day. There were no obvious wind ridges and reports were unavailable from Nakiska ridge. By observation the high cloud was southwest or west, starting slow and picking up to moderate. A light drizzle started around 3 pm

Raptor Observations:
We saw 23 Golden eagles (14a, 2 juvenile, 1 subadult, 6 unaged), 1 Osprey and 1 unidentified raptor. The majority of the eagles appeared over the bumps or the right side of Patrick which did not give us a good opportunity to age them. They were all flying quite low. Several came over Lorette, going behind Patrick with only glimpses of them as they tried to get some height around the bumps. One flew directly over Olympic and disappeared going south by Mt Kidd. This eagle hardly flapped but had somehow found a good glide route. The Osprey caused a lot of discussion as it circled at the north end of Patrick and then basically followed the river over us with its very long, narrow wings.

Non-raptor Observations:
The Ravens were quite well behaved today as they seemed to be preoccupied with activities other than harassing the eagles. They flew back and forth across the valley over top of us several times and visited on both ridges. In the morning, two magpies joined some of the Ravens scavenging from what appeared to be white fur upstream from the site and on the opposite side of the river. No predatory animals were observed. The Pileated Woodpecker was heard early in the morning very briefly, then the Dipper flew in front of our site several time during the day. Gray Jays visited early in the day and later were seen flying across the river. A flock OF Pine Grosbeaks flew over and then numerous flocks of small birds, Pine Siskins, Red-crossbills were seen. Two flocks of Canada geese each counting close to 100 made their way over us. A single Mallard swam in the still water before flying up stream and a small flock of Mountain Chickadees were in the spruce trees. Two White-tailed deer were in the meadow at the end of the day.

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Mount Lorette information may be found at: eaglewatch.ca
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