As some of you have read by now, a huge flight of Broad-winged Hawks was observed at Erie Metropark south of Detroit yesterday - probably their second largest flight ever. Three of us from Holmes County decided to try the Toledo area instead. The wind was from the northeast, a factor that unfortunately allowed the hawks to spread out away from Lake Erie after they leave the Erie Metropark area. It took us several hours to find a flight line in Toledo. We started seeing Broadwings about 1 pm, ending up at a nice public park not far south of the state line, where we stayed until 6:45 pm.

There were a number of large kettles of Broadwings, the two largest with 1500 and 2000 hawks milling around getting altitude before streaming on to the southwest. Most of the birds were very high. Our total for the day was 7296 Broad-winged Hawks, plus 500 more that we saw late in the morning two miles north into Michigan morning. Just to put that in perspective, the most we had seen in a day in Ohio before was 2400.  There were also small numbers of migrating Sharp-shinned Hawks, Turkey Vultures and American Kestrels, plus 2 Ospreys, 2 Northern Harriers, 2 Bald Eagles, 2 Peregrine Falcons, and 3 unidentified falcons.


     Bruce Glick  [log in to unmask]  Millersburg, Ohio




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