Mount Lorette (15 Oct 2025) 66 Raptors
Alberta, Canada
| Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 15, 2025 | |||
| Species | Day’s Count | Month Total | Season Total |
| Turkey Vulture | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Osprey | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Bald Eagle | 1 | 39 | 43 |
| Northern Harrier | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | 1 | 160 | 190 |
| Cooper’s Hawk | 0 | 10 | 14 |
| American Goshawk | 0 | 10 | 16 |
| Broad-winged Hawk | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Swainson’s Hawk | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Red-tailed Hawk | 0 | 18 | 40 |
| Ferruginous Hawk | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rough-legged Hawk | 0 | 15 | 15 |
| Golden Eagle | 63 | 1395 | 1537 |
| American Kestrel | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Merlin | 0 | 8 | 13 |
| Gyrfalcon | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Peregrine Falcon | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Prairie Falcon | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Unknown Accipitrine | 0 | 5 | 11 |
| Unknown Buteo | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Unknown Falcon | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Unknown Eagle | 0 | 4 | 5 |
| Unknown Raptor | 1 | 6 | 12 |
| Total: | 66 | 1675 | 1920 |
| Observation start time: | 07:00:00 |
| Observation end time: | 18:00:00 |
| Total observation time: | 9.75 hours |
| Official Counter | Caroline Lambert, Lynette MacCulloch |
| Observers: | Peter Lloyd |
Visitors:
Besides the Adaptive group, about 12 people came by and chatted or stopped to look for birds. Huge thanks to Julie and Eric who spent several hours helping us to spot eagles and were very successful at it!
Weather:
Today was a clear cold sunny day. Starting temperature upon arrival at Hay Meadows was minus 7.By noon, the temperature was up to plus 1 for a high of plus 6 and dropped to plus 4 at end of day. The whole day was quite calm with wind barely perceptible , but switching from west to south and back. There no clouds with the exception of some high cirrus cloud beginning to form mid afternoon which then blew away and were replaced by bits and pieces of cirrus cloud through the afternoon. Ridge winds were south west to begin with and switched around to north north east anywhere from 3 – 23 km/hr. High winds were not predictable as there were no clouds to see. Later in the day, the wind seem to be strong as the eagles were seen high over Lorette and 5 minutes later over Patrick.
Raptor Observations:
The birds were slow in starting only two eagles seen before noon, then picked up at 1 pm. The early afternoon ones were seen over the bumps but then the majority were spotted over Hummingbird, Skogan pass and Mt Lorette. They were also travelling in pairs or 3s and 4s which made it very difficult to age them as the moving targets that they are, hard to keep track of and going out of sight when they turned. We did get a second chance with some of them as they came over Patrick. Some were very low , sometimes going in front of Patrick. One even landed on Patrick for a short rest. Then as the high winds seemed to pick up late in the afternoon, they flew high above Patrick. All told we saw 63 Golden eagles (34 adults,6 juvenile, 4 subadults and 19 unaged). We also saw an Unidentified Raptor, 1 sharp-shinned Hawk and 1 Bald Eagle (adult). The resident Goshawk came and sat in a tree in front of us, so we were able to point it out to a group of Adaptive birdwatchers who came specifically to see Golden eagles. As they were packing up, 3 eagles came over Skogan pass so they were able to see Golden eagles too.
Non-raptor Observations:
AS well as the raptors, we did see a Clark’s Nutcracker, 20 Ravens, several Boreal Chickadees, Black-capped Chickadees and the female Belted Kingfisher sat in a tree upstream for a few minutes. A small herd of Big Horn Mountain Sheep were seen on the ridge leading up to Nakiska.
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Mount Lorette information may be found at: eaglewatch.ca
More information at hawkcount.org: [Site Profile] [Day Summary] [Month Summary]
Count data submitted via Trektellen.org – [Project Details]
