ellyssian: (Default)
Mina Ellyse ([personal profile] ellyssian) wrote2006-10-14 02:33 pm

October Hawk Watch & Dinner

What? A nice, maybe cold, maybe wet, day on the side of a mountain, looking into sun/clouds/fog/rain/sky for hawks/falcons/osprey/eagles/rocs/pterodactyls/more, followed by a meal of chorizo quesadillas and fajitas.

When? Saturday, October 14 8am-7pm or some subset thereof

Where? At Bake Oven Knob until the mid-late afternoon, and then caravanning back to the Ellyssian Estates for dinner

Why? Because.

The Particulars: Justin, Rachel and I will be leaving the house around 9:30am. Show up at the house before 9:00am and our guard cats will do their duty (i.e. run away or roll over for pettings.) Knocking at the door, however, will mostly be ignored. You can meet us at the house between 9:00am-9:30am to follow us over, if you'd like. We'll likely get to the BOK parking lot before 10:00am, and will hang around there until 10:30am or until all expected folks arrive, and then we'll head up [livejournal.com profile] thetrail. Around 3:30pm or so, we'll head back down to the parking lot and home. Dinner will follow as soon as possible after that.

The road to the parking lot is stone, washout, gravel, dirt, and smallish ruts. The Contour made the trip recently, and, while showing the abuses of the rains that hit us this year, it didn't have too much difficulty. Except when I drove off the parking lot embankment thinking it was a usable road. Bit to the right would have been less traumatic, eh? In other words, you'll be okay in anything but a Ferrari, but if you have four or all wheel drive, you'd probably be more comfortable.

The hike to the top took us about a half hour each direction. There's some (generally avoidable) mud at the bottom, segueing quickly into some rocks, which become more rocks, which become awful lots of rocks. Sneakers can survive. Flip flops, loafers, or ballet shoes wouldn't.

Bring a lunch and/or snack to hold you over until dinner. Bring some water. Expect to pack back whatever you bring - the only facilities at the top will be a counting board for the hawks and maybe -maybe- a decoy owl on a pole.

Bring something to look at the birds with - binoculars, spyglasses, telephoto cameras, bionic vision, etc. You can spot a lot with the naked eye, so if you don't have an ocular enhancement device it won't be a total loss, but it's a lot more fun if you can actually count the feathers as they fly by...

Bring some corn on the cob, a salad, some Riesling (there's a vineyard right around the corner,) or some desserts for the dinner (let me know what you're bringing and I'll cross them off, or, for the desserts, list them below...)

[identity profile] kk1raven.livejournal.com 2006-10-11 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)
You do realize that mid-September is the peak of Broad-wing migration and the number of birds seen in October is likely to be noticably less?

In any case, I'm just going to have to see what time I get done with the walk. If I get done relatively early, and the weather is good for hawk-watching I may well join you. If the weather is wrong, I probably won't. After all, I can just go up on Mt Penn behind my house to watch hawks - much closer although the company is usually not as good. (We tried to get them to let us use the firetower there for hawk counting, but the deal never quite got made to do it.)

[identity profile] ellyssian.livejournal.com 2006-10-11 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Peak broad-winged hawk is early-mid September, but this weekend is still stong for osprey, picking up for northern harrier, strong for sharp-shinned hawk, peak for Cooper's hawk, picking up for red-tailed hawk, starting for rough-legged, picking up for golden eagle, still strong for American Kestrel, and peak for merlin and peregrine falcon.

[identity profile] kk1raven.livejournal.com 2006-10-12 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
You often get more variety in October, but the other species add up to a lot less individual hawks than what you see if you get a good Broad-wing day. Broad-wings can come through in groups of thousands at a time. Most of the others tend to be either solitary or come in twos and threes. I've seen a "big" kettle of Red-tails exactly once, in twenty-five years of being involved with hawk counts. IIRC, we ended up with somethng like 69 of them that hour, most of them in a single group.

[identity profile] noone234.livejournal.com 2006-10-14 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
Bad news. Corn is about a month out of season. Most local farmers' stands were out of it. Amore Farms and Wegman's had some. The ears at Amore Farms looked so-so, so I went with Wegman's. Looks alright. Hope it tastes good.