Peregrines at the 1500 Mark – More Ospreys

Top: Peregrine Falcon by Kerry Ross. Bottom: Osprey by Ted Keyel.

We finally surpassed the 1500 Peregrine mark this season, encouraged by several 3-digit single day counts this week. Yesterday, October 9 the count team tallied 272 migratory Peregrine Falcons, taking us to 1512 for the season. The species typically peaks around mid-October at our site, but each year is slightly different. Within recent years we have seen peaks as early as late September and other years when their flights were relatively well spread throughout the season. Challenging weather this year, particularly effects of hurricane Joaquin interfered with the detection of migratory raptors at our site. It is unclear at this point how this will affect our overall Peregrine numbers for this fall.

It was also encouraging to see 116 Ospreys migrating over Curry Hammock. Ospreys typically peak early in the season, and years when we start counting during mid-September, such as this year – we run the risk of missing too many. Just having tallied beyond 1000 Ospreys as of yesterday, we may reach our average seasonal count of 1289 for the species this season.