ML316282261
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Behaviors
- Flying
Media notes
Image taken with a Canon 70D DSLR equipped with a 100-400 mm lens at 100 m
Observation details
Rough estimate in groups of 100 each. Went by starting at about 9:30. One long string of 200+ birds followed by another group of 50-100 birds shortly afterward from the same direction. Then there was another group of ~50 to the southwest about 5 minutes later. Several smaller groups of 1-5 birds persisted for another 20 minutes. 300 may be conservative. Distant photos, but even a wide angle view with a cell phone was insufficient to capture the full extent of the largest flock. Update: Counts from two photos show about 300 birds in two groups, but this doesn't include another group that (by eye) I estimated to contain another ~100 hawks, so it appears the true number was at least 400. The wide angle view below (ML316281401) from a cell phone camera shows about 250 hawks. The narrower angle view (ML316282261), although not exactly in focus, shows at least another 38 birds. This second image was taken with a 100-400 mm lens set at 100 mm facing southwest. This was a different group of hawks from the ones in the cell phone image. The third image below (ML316300651) is another wide angle view taken with a cell phone. It was taken 2+ minutes after the first cell phone image, and after the largest group of hawks had moved west, and it shows an additional 90 birds. Based on the numbers that are visible in the pictures, I increased the original estimate of 300 to 400. Even this probably still an underestimate due to the birds that were outside the views of the images and the small groups of stragglers that continued to move through afterward.
Technical information
- Original file size
- 3.99 MB