Friday, October 8, 2010

Eagles

Last days were peak migration days of Lesser Spotted Eagle. It is always exciting to see such huge numbers of such a rare bird.
On Wednesday I joined the raptor migration team (or in American 'hawk-watch') to help them on the predicted peak day. And peak day it was, with over 25000 birds passing through (thanks Jonathan for the data). Lucky me, most of the action was not over my station directly, so I could enjoy the huge numbers without having to count them. Eventually I had a great day with lots of birds and lots of time to have lots of coffee with lots of good friends. And got paid for that... And you call that a real job...

Today while visiting my in-laws in an adjacent village to mine, I had fantastic eagle migration just before we were hit by the first real weather system of the season. I had a only few hundreds of eagles, but apparently soaring conditions were awful and the poor birds were flying at tree-top level. Quite an amazing site. Among the lesser spots I had several Steppes, 1 greater spot and 1 Eastern Imp. Unfortunately no camera...

Special thanks to Thomas Krumenacker for his great images, all taken in recent days.

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