An incredible hawk watch!

So, I looked at the weather forecast and saw that Wed Sept 16th looked perfect for migrating hawks. It was 21 C and not a cloud in the sky. I felt like it would be a great chance to see Broad-wingeds and the much rarer Swainson's Hawk. I was birding with Ed Yong a Pulitzer price science writer who has written 3 books on birding and who was speaking on his latest book "Life beyond Measure" at UBC on Thursday. I asked him if he wanted to come along for a hawk watch and he did! He wanted to interview me for his upcoming 4th book, which was really touching. The day before I was looking at Sharp-tailed Sandpiper at Iona and ran into Conor and told him I would be going up for a hawk watch and he asked to join and I said sure the more the merrier! He brought his friend Jack and so 6 of us were up there.

We arrived around 11 am and it was super slow. I started to think maybe I was wrong on my prediction as it was super warm and no clouds. However, we did have some good passerines but no hawk action really started until 12:30pm, which to me was quite late compared to our previous hawk watches. At about 12:45pm, the first juv Broad-winged Hawk went flying by and then that was quickly followed by 3 other adults! Then the Red-tailed Hawks and many Northern Harriers started to come through. Last year we had a juvenile American Goshawk and was hoping for a repeat but no goshawk. We had a few Sharp-shinned Hawks and 3 Cooper's Hawks. Usually, we have many more Sharpies than today one day we recorded 100 but today only 7. We had Pileated Woodpecker, Vaux's Swifts, Red-breasted Sapsucker, Hutton's Vireo, Hairy Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Savannah Sparrows and American Pipits.

Adult Broad-winged Hawk over Cypress Mtn - Photo: Melissa Hafting

Juv Broad-winged Hawk over Cypress Mtn - Photo: Melissa Hafting

Then a dark morph Swainson's Hawk came by at 2:53 pm and then at 2:55pm another gorgeous dark morph followed his brethren. 

Dark-morph Swainson's Hawks in West Vancouver - Photos: Melissa Hafting

Right after that my friend Rob Lyske screamed out that's a flock of Clark's Nutcrackers (CLNU)! I almost fell out of my chair we all looked and couldn't believe it. My friend Peter Candido counted 42 in his photo. I was in a state of shock. I had just discussed with the group about how we need to keep an eye out for CLNU because we had 2 recent records in Vancouver and that they seemed to be irrupting south of us in California and Oregon and WA. In California, my friend Bridget told me that Santa Barbara had a flock of 1200 CLNU! She sent me the eBird checklist. Note the checklist said "where the heck are they coming from and where the heck are they going?" She also has found some herself in San Diego. It seems the hypothesis is that there has been a climate-change induced crop failure, that is causing the birds to flock up like Pinyon Jays do and search for food. 

1 of 42 Clark's Nutcrackers flying east over Cypress Mtn - Photos: Peter Candido

It is very alarming, the negative effects on birds that is occurring. Sure, El Niño and climate change may give us the opportunity to see rare birds but at what cost? Also, the thought of 1200 Nutcrackers roaming around in a mega flock is almost apocalyptic. It is quite scary to hear what these birds are going through. The bird was a new Metro Vancouver bird for us all on the mountain today, which made the beautiful day even more special.

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