Bluff action - November 22nd

With the deep breeze rolling through southern Ontario on the night of the 21st/22nd (temps ranged as low as minus 18!) and the prospect of east winds, I thought I'd give the Bluff one last go and decided to take the day off.

As soon as I showed up (around 10am), I had an adult Northern Shrike flying south along the bluff edge.  It ended up sticking around for the better part of an hour, allowing me to get some nice looks at it.

Shortly after the shrike I had a first-year Bald Eagle and an adult Red-shouldered Hawk migrating inland. With these two (moving south), I thought there was going to be a push of raptors moving; however, unfortunately this didn't really materialize.  I say 'didn't really' because I did end up having two pretty good raptors after lunch, with a late Turkey Vulture and a classic first-year Golden Eagle, which was pretty nice!

As everyone has witnessed this fall there's been a pretty good finch irruption which has been occurring more or less since late August.  I ended up with some decent numbers considering the late date, with close to 160 Common Redpolls, a single Evening Grosbeak (one of my favourites), a single Pine Siskin, and a few A. Goldfinches.

The highlight (for me), however, was a flock of 19 Bohemian Waxwings that flew south, just before 11am.  I had another flock of waxwings (too far to ID to species) later that I think was a mixed species flock.

All in all I was pretty happy with my decision to play hookey.