September Summary
Top Five Species (September):
- Red-tailed Hawk -- 64 observations
- Turkey Vulture -- 51 obs
- Swainson's Hawk -- 33 obs (+1)
- Osprey -- 14 obs (-1)
- American Kestrel -- 13 obs (new to Top 5)
Top Five Species (Overall):
- Red-tailed Hawk -- 140 observations
- Turkey Vulture -- 103 obs (+1)
- Osprey -- 80 obs (-1)
- Swainson's Hawk -- 65 obs
- Great Horned Owl -- 39 obs
Total Species: 25
Top Five Observers (Obs):
- birdwhisperer -- 194 obs
- @draginous -- 68 obs
- @cgates326 -- 35 obs
- @danithedeer -- 24 obs
- @davedrum -- 17 obs
Top Five Observers (Species):
- birdwhisperer -- 13 species
- cgates326 -- 11 species
- draginous -- 10 species
- danithedeer -- 8 species
- davedrum -- 7 species
Species Still Not Observed: White-tailed Kite, Rough-legged Hawk, Flammulated Owl, Snowy Owl, Northern Hawk-Owl, Spotted Owl, Barred Owl, Short-eared Owl, Boreal Owl and Gyrfalcon -- 10 left
Species Added in September: Broad-winged Hawk, Barn Owl and Merlin
Counties Needing Observations: WA (4) -- Douglas, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin
News and Updates:
That's right, Week 13 is officially over, so it's time to summarize what went down in the past seven days. In ways of observations, this week was a far cry from last week with only 48 observations being submitted. On the other hand, take a look at the below-linked observation. That Turkey Vulture officially marks the 100th vulture photographed in this year's project. The reason why this is so significant is because this is the first time ever, excluding Red-tailed Hawk, a raptor species obtained over 100 observations in a single season. This makes sense considering Turkey Vultures is the dominate species over HawkWatch. This September, Lucky Peak in Idaho recorded over 1,000 different vultures migrating and surpassed any other raptor species!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/137113969
As much as the aforementioned observation is cool, I don't think it quite has the flare to be observation of the week. And besides I really like the photo @fishaspey got of a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk in Wallowa County, Oregon. This is our 7th Broad-winged Hawk reported to the project this year, and this just further solidifies my opinion that these small, compact Buteos are not rare but annual, you just need to be in the right place to see them. To further prove my opinion, Lucky Peak got a whomping 140 Broad-wings this year, including a kettle of 42 birds! You can see the observation here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136704872
Observation of the Month goes to @shearwater13 since this is going to be the last time I can highlight a Swainson's Hawk. Photographed in Walla Walla, Washington, this dark morph juvenile can only be described as one of the coolest hawks out there. You can see the observation here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136242191
I'd like to send a huge shoutout to those who were photographing birds in Oregon this month. For the second year in a row, we've acquired an observation for every single county in Oregon and we did it all within the first half of the project. If we can get the remaining Washington counties, we can end the year with an observation in all 38 counties.
I also want to talk about the observation count for the project. We have completed three months of the project, only three more remain. We are currently sitting at 615 observations, so we are on a current pace to end the year at 1,230. This projected number is just shy of our 2021 totals and a potential record-breaking year. I'm sure we can do it but those are the numbers.
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