Day One
We hit the road about 6:45am, made a couple stops on the way and arrived at the sanctuary about 10:30am. The weather was partly cloudy, a warm 78F (climbing to 85F by 2pm), the winds were SW 6mph gusting to 11mph (wind gusts did not feel very strong at the lookouts).
Our destination was the North Lookout, the highest lookout, elevation 1,521 feet. It’s approximately a mile walk, most of the trail is very rocky - we’ll get a workout. The start of the hike was the easy part. We hear some Black-capped Chickadees and some Blue Jay’s, otherwise it is very quiet bird-wise.
As we approached the first lookout - South Lookout, there is a raptor identification sign.
We soon reached the South Lookout - and what a view!!
No sign of raptors flying so we continued our hike up. Now the trail is becoming more challenging. The picture below is the trail.
On our way up we decide to checkout The Slide and a spot where hunters would shoot the raptors.
We continue the our hike up.
We arrived at North Lookout about noon and this is the view - just breathtaking!
The raptor numbers were not particularly high, but there was a variety. It was difficult getting pictures. They would come into sight but moving very fast and sometimes backlit. The views I got were:
5 Black Vultures
14 Turkey Vultures
1 Northern Harrier
2 Bald Eagles
8 Broad-winged Hawks
3 American Kestrels
1 Merlin
1 Peregrine Falcon
1 Red-tailed Hawk
6 Osprey
We left the North Lookout about 2:30pm to go back to the South Lookout.
It was slow there as well so we decided to call it a day.
Day One Counts
My friends had to stop to check where they fit on the raptor scale - Judy was a Turkey Vulture and Dolores was a female Red-tailed Hawk.
