Observation start time: 09:30:00 Observation end time: 16:00:00 Total observation time: 6.5 hours
Official Counter: Cindy Bickel
Observers: Darrell Smith, Diane Stewart
Visitors: We met today, Nancy Young, a local resident who invited us to come at some point in the future to share about hawk-watching to their senior group that meets at the Wayne Township Recreation Building. Seven veterans from the Chambersburg area come up to visit for a while. A Donald and Judith Stoltzfus from the Lancaster Area were on a local retreat but came up and spent about an hour at the watch. They were very happy to witness the two beautiful Bald Eagles overhead.
Weather: High cirrus clouds fully covered the sky until after 1 pm when they started to dissipate allowing blue sky peak through. Winds were from the SE and stayed fairly constant around 5 mph give or take, throughout the day.
Raptor Observations: Light raptor migration on the south side of the watch until the 2:00 pm hour when winds picked up a bit giving us 21 birds for that hour. Only two eagles were spotted today but they were close and circling over us for at least five minutes! As always local TV's, BV's and RT's were active today but not counted. With today's count we have officially surpassed 10,000 birds for this Fall season!
Non-raptor Observations: Raven's, Bluejays and a Downy Woodpecker were around the watch today. One Butterfly was seen along with hundreds of bugs, including the ladybug imposters, that started swarming in the afternoon. Once again saw a local Raven escorting a migrating Red-Tail out of our air space!
Predictions: Predicting that Darrell will never again come to Jacks Mountain Watch leaving his lawn chair and binoculars at home! He still stayed to help out until around 1:45 sitting on the ground and using a very small pair of barrowed binoculars! Now that's dedication! ======================================================================== Report submitted by Darrell Smith (<oleagleye...>)