Mount Lorette (17 Oct 2025) 70 Raptors
Alberta, Canada
| Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 17, 2025 | |||
| Species | Day’s Count | Month Total | Season Total |
| Turkey Vulture | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Osprey | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Bald Eagle | 0 | 39 | 43 |
| Northern Harrier | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | 1 | 164 | 194 |
| Cooper’s Hawk | 0 | 10 | 14 |
| American Goshawk | 0 | 11 | 17 |
| 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 | 68 | 1686 | 1828 |
| 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 | 7 | 13 |
| Total: | 70 | 1972 | 2217 |
| Observation start time: | 07:00:00 |
| Observation end time: | 18:00:00 |
| Total observation time: | 9.97 hours |
| Official Counter | Lynette MacCulloch |
| Observers: | Caroline Lambert |
Visitors:
10 visitors stopped to chat, Jamie, Gabriella and Michele helped to look for eagles and did spot some for us. A big thank you to Caroline for coming out and doing the CBC interview!
Weather:
Weather wise today was quite a fine show of changeability. Upon arrival at the site, the sky was completely covered in cloud. Lorette, the top of Patrick and Mt Kidd and Mt Allen were obscured. Dark clouds hung over Nakiska. A fine drizzle began which quickly turned into a complete whiteout throwing graupel and some snow flakes. The temperature was 3 degrees which stayed this way till the clouds started to lift at 11:00 and blue sky slowly began to creep in from the northwest. Both ridges had their share of being completely covered to lifting around 1 pm when the temperature was at its highest 6 degrees. The sun came out and was quite pleasant for a short time before the clouds rushed in and once again a whiteout and more snow fall. the temperature dropped slowly to 3 degrees where it stayed till the end of the day. Ground winds were light, mostly from the southwest. Ridge winds moved around from SW at 31km/hr. with gusts of up to 64 km /hr. to NNE at 19 km/hr back to SW or WSW, with gusts.
Raptor Observations:
The raptors started coming quite early while the clouds were still covering Patrick, making aging impossible. The Golden eagles consistently came in behind Patrick or just to the right of Patrick, with only one appearing just to the right of Lorette. Most of them were very high and moving fast, however we did have a few lower ones that turned nicely offering better observation for us. We did see a juvenile eagle flying playfully with an adult. The two did an aerial tumble and continued on their way. In all we saw 68 Golden eagles (23 adults, 40 unaged, 3 juvenile, 2 subadults) One Sharp-shinned hawk and One unknow raptor. As well as the migrating birds a juvenile Bald eagle flew north up the valley, the Goshawk flew across the Valley and a Merlin flew near the Goshawk then landed in the meadow before relanding in a tree by the river.
Non-raptor Observations:
There were not a lot of other birds seen, some Dark eyed Juncos and an American Robin on the walk in. Three Ruffed grouse were seen by Caroline. 6 Brown-headed cowbirds, 8 Raven, 1 Canada Jay, the male Kingfisher who spent some time fishing and a Northern Shrike were our visiting avian friends.
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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]
