Various Birds North of the Channel Saturday

As on Wednesday, I spent a couple hours up on "Jeff's Dune" at Muskegon State Park this morning.  Lots to watch, some predictable, some unexplainable, all fascinating.

Unofficial migration count: 3 American Kestrel, 10 Eastern Bluebird, 6 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 1,008 Double-crested Cormorant, 3 Broad-winged Hawk, 3 Cooper's Hawk, 250 Blue Jay, 1 Red-tailed Hawk, 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, 9 American Crow, 1 Northern Harrier (brown).

Miscellaneous: About 40 American Crows cawed and flew around the trees up north.  At 10:30 they began moving south toward the trees north of Jeff's dune.  A few minutes later a Red-shouldered Hawk flew from my left northward directly toward the flock of crows.  Why?  When it got within their flock, they began mobbing it (duh!) and drove it down into the trees. They continued to caw and crawk in those trees driving out a Broad-winged Hawk which they continued to harass down into trees and up again and down, then eastward toward Muskegon Lake.  A couple of times that bird seemed to be in real trouble from their attacks.  Meanwhile a young Cooper's Hawk flew out of the trees north, landed in a tree behind me for awhile, then continued southward (so recorded as "migrant").  And then the Red-shouldered Hawk departed the trees and headed further north.

Having already counted 8 migrating Double-crested Cormorants the first hour, I noticed several V's approaching from the west at 11:00.  I guesstimated 1,000 counting conservatively by tens.  Those directly overhead were close enough to hear their wings.

Migrating Cooper's Hawks are not that common, but another migrated over the trees to the west during the second hour, and about two hundred yards behind it another!

At 11:22 a Red-shouldered Hawk (assuming the same bird as earlier since red-shouldered's are not that common here either) started climbing a thermal north.  It was joined by a Broad-winged Hawk (maybe the one from earlier; who knows?) which harrassed the red-shouldered a couple times (maybe taking out its aggressions from the crow attack?) when a Sharp-shinned Hawk joined their thermal and made two attacks on the broadwinged (establishing pecking order?) before all three climbed higher and higher northwest.  I stopped watching those three and classified them all as "migrants", but who knows?

Heard lotsa Eastern Bluebirds this morning and every now and then spotted the sources flying southbound.  I figured they were migrating, but I didn't know bluebirds migrated in the daytime and still don't!  There were many Northern Flickers calling and flying around today as on Wednesday.

Bluejays are harder to count as migrants here than from the south side of the Channel because you often see some heading east and west down in the jackpines whereas most once they cross the Channel keep flying south toward the Ovals.

Before leaving I began noticing a few American Crows flying high and southbound, continuing over the Channel.  I saw no migrating Monarch butterflies up on the dune, but two flew by when I was back at my car.

- Ric