Thursday Morning on Jeff's Dune

Yesterday I spent a few hours hawkwatching up on Jeff's Dune (Muskegon State Park north of the Muskegon Channel).  As usual, lots of bird activity, kind of like watching a show through binoculars and spotting scope, with some of the action up close and personal too.

"Here's looking at you!"

I've always liked the "false face" on the side of the head of an American Kestrel.  "No sense attacking me because I 'see you' already".  This one's really looking west and may have been a local bird.  Three others flew by heading south.

Other migrants included a brown Northern Harrier, three Sharp-shinned Hawks, four Broad-winged Hawks, a (presumably) Ruby-throated Hummingbird, a few Monarch butterflies, and perhaps some of the many Northern Flickers or Blue Jays (but no groups of jays heading south).

Sharp-shinned Hawk, already ate breakfast.

Broad-winged Hawk

Flickers plentiful all morning, two here in the same tree.

Raptors that did not appear to be migrating included a Cooper's Hawk (harrassed by Blue Jays), another accipiter that chased some jays and was screamed at by a female Pileated Woodpecker), a Red-tailed Hawk, an immature Bald Eagle and a Merlin which flew around during the morning and perched on the same distant snag three different times.

Merlin

Memorable trivia included kestrels carrying prey (one a small body still trailing dune grass, one perhaps a grasshopper that the falcon stopped to eat before continuing south over the channel), jays chasing raptors around the trees and sometimes being chased in return, a jay screaming like a Red-shouldered Hawk as it flew here and there, a pair of very vocal Pileated Woodpeckers, and the flickers flying back and forth all morning.  Nineteen bird species today.

But who's counting?  For a normal person, ho-hum.  For a bird-brain, a very nice show.

- Ric