The following message was sent to me today by the Director of the GGRO,
Allen Fish.

The count site is located in Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate
Bridge in San Francisco.


"Golden Gate Raptor Observatory hawk-counters recorded 295 sightings of
Broad-winged Hawks today in the Marin Headlands from Hawk Hill during a
4-hour count period. This is a higher one-day Broadwing count by a factor
of five than has ever been tallied here at the Golden Gate, and I suspect a
record BWHA count for anywhere west of Texas. (The GGRO hawkwatch count
system does not count explicit numbers of hawks, but rather numbers of
hawk-sightings, so our work is not always comparable to other hawk
migration sites.)

Background and details:

After two days of fog, what started as a pea-soup fog morning opened up
around 11:30 am to reveal warm hilltops and eastern slopes in the Marin
Headlands, and kettles of Broad-winged Hawks forming and unforming in all
four directions.

>From 11:30 am to 3:30 pm, GGRO Hawkwatchers counted Broad-winged sightings,
doing their best to track individuals flying between kettles, using the
Quadrant style that we've used here since 1989 to minimize double-counts as
long as hawks were continuously visible.

The 295 sightings recorded today included 226 juveniles, 2 adults, and 67
of undocumented ages. Two dark morph juveniles were also noted. Several
kettles of 25+ Broad-winged Hawks were documented today, often mixed with
smaller numbers of accipiters, TV's, redtails and redshoulders.

The highest Broad-winged count at GGRO for one autumn season was 235
sightings in 1999. As of today we are at 374 Broadwing sightings for 2012
and since this species tends to fly though October, there will be more
Broadies to come. The total count for all raptor species today was 822
raptor-sightings, for an hourly rate of just above 200 raptors per hour.

For daily count reports, or more info on GGRO call www.ggro.org, email us
ggro at parksconservancy.org or call 415-331-0730.

Thanks for your interest -

Allen Fish
GGRO Director
afish at parksconservancy.org"

--
Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232
(360) 757-1911
falconresearch at gmail.com
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