ML264835611

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

An incredible day. We didn’t have any sort of settling down yesterday, but Militia Hill in PA had almost 5,000 so those birds had to have settled just north of us. They were up by 8:15 and I got to the hawkwatching hill at 8:40. It started out with small groups of up to 30, with many kettling straight over our heads at a low altitude, giving fantastic looks. Then, after 9:00, we spotted the first of many kettles and there was pretty much nonstop kettling and streaming for the next two hours, especially from 10 to 11, when we had about 6,000 birds, with the largest flock (if you could call it that, the kettles were connected by streaming birds which made them extremely difficult to count) being 936 individuals. It slowed down pretty quickly after 11:30 and never picked back up, so we fell just short of the all-time record which is 8,593. I had to leave around 12 so this is the estimate of birds seen at that point; I came back around 4 and only about 15 birds came through from then to 6. Total count was somewhere around 8,060. Despite the anticlimactic ending, still a phenomenal day and a strong second place finish!

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

Lens

EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +1.4x III

ISO

500

Focal length

560 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

2646 pixels x 1764 pixels

Original file size

180.08 KB