Hi, Strong southwest winds made traveling north easy for migrating hawks and vultures today. The strong winds and blue skies made it difficult at times for the Black Swamp Bird Observatory hawk counters on the Magee Marsh Observation Tower to identify birds. They mentioned that the birds were very high this afternoon. However, they did a great job in tallying the following birds: Turkey Vulture-351 Red-tailed Hawk- 20 Rough-legged Hawk-2 Rough-legged Hawk-2 Unid. Buteo-6 -there were probably more but the birds in PM were very high Cooper's Hawk- 3 Sharp-shinned Hawk-7 Unid. Accipiter-4 Bald Eagle-6 American Kestrel- 1---Kestrel numbers are really low the past few years. Low numbers of Kestrels has been seen at other count sites across the country. It appears that a lot of birds must have been really high and not visible because of the lack of Red-shouldered Hawks on the count. I will be curious to see what our other sites in the marsh region that were covered today, saw as well. Check out the website at www.bsbobird.org <http://www.bsbobird.org/> for tracking the hawk migration in the Lake Erie Marsh Region. Enjoy early spring! Julie Shieldcastle Black Swamp Bird Observatory 13551 W. State Route 2 Oak Harbor, OH 43449 419-898-4070 ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]