Greenwich Cranes

(from Wikipedia)

I headed over to Greenwich Hawkwatch to try for a golden eagle today. I failed, but saw some better birds, as well as the usual hawks.

Raptor Highlights: A few harriers (my favorite raptors), lots of red-shoulders, a kestrel, bald eagle, many coopers hawks and sharp-shinned hawks.

Also, a few migrating common loons were interesting. A skein of Canada geese numbering almost 190 birds flew over as well.

The best birds were two large birds that one of the hawkwatchers picked up over the nature center. There had been 5 sandhill cranes flying over earlier in the week, so he quickly realized that that was what they were. We all watched them fly by for a couple minutes, before disappearing.

Cranes are very unusual on the east coast north of Florida, so to have 7 in one week at one spot it remarkable. These 2 brought the year total for greenwich to 9, possibly a record. Very cool to see them there.

One last thing- did you notice how I titled this post. "Today...". Not "In August...", or "Last year...", but today. That means that I am finally caught up on my blog posts. YES!!!

Eamon Corbett

Edit: I also had a pileated woodpecker flyby- my first outside of Florida.