Mount Lorette (22 Oct 2024) 51 Raptors

Visitors:
With ice fog in Calgary in the morning, and icy conditions on the TransCanada from yesterday’s storm, it was not surprising that very few people came by the site today. Only two stopped to talk.

Weather:
The temperature stayed in a narrow range today, starting at -2C, rising to +2C, and falling to +1 at the end of the day. Yesterday was the first winter storm of the season, and 10cm of fresh snow was on the ground, making the count site look remarkably different from a few days ago. Most of the day was characterized by blue sky, making spotting the migrants quite difficult, and snow blowing off the ridges didn’t help. Peaks on the west ridge were frequently blotted out by blowing snow. The few cumulus clouds were coming from the northwest, but ridge winds were mostly 30-50kph from the southwest, with gusts up to 94. Ground winds were mostly calm.

Raptor Observations:
All of the migrants were seen on the east ridge. Most appeared to come in low, and then kite up rapidly well above the ridge, making it hard to find them in the blue sky if they weren’t spotted when low on the ridge. It was a challenge to get them in the scope in the featureless sky, and when they were low down, the albedo effect made nearly all of them look as if all their flight feathers were pale. That, combined with no soaring, made aging very difficult and many of the eagles went unaged. Movement was slow in the morning, but built up gradually with a third of the eagles seen in the last 90 minutes. The last one was seen several minutes after sunset.
The totals were 47 Golden Eagles (14a, 1sa, 3j, 5ui, 24u), two Bald Eagles (1a, 1j), one Sharp-shinned Hawk, and one Rough-legged Hawk.
Two eagles on the west ridge (one adult Golden Eagle and one adult Bald Eagle) were deemed to be not migrating.

Non-raptor Observations:
One distraction from watching eagles was the water level in the river. Apparently there was a major issue with the power grid, and presumably water was released from the reservoir upstream from the count site to help with generation of electricity from hydropower. This led to the water rising quite rapidly in the river. A couple of photos from the morning and then later in the day can be found on our Instagram account, @_eaglecount, showing the different water levels (and also how much snow melted during the day!). The water level was dropping before we left.
Other birds seen were: Canada Goose 59 (flying south), Common Merganser 1, Canada Jay 3, Common Raven 8, Pine Siskin 3, American Tree Sparrow 2

Report submitted by ()
Mount Lorette information may be found at: eaglewatch.ca
More information at hawkcount.org: [Site Profile] [Day Summary] [Month Summary]