Saturday, October 22, 2011

Raptors from the house

After scoring the parakeet shots detailed below, I decided to have a go at looking for migrant raptors (they are now expecting massive Black Baza passage down at Chumphon - massive being like 50,000 birds in a single day!).  So I did a watch between 09.20 and 10.10 hours (peak daily passage at Chumphon is usually 9am - 11am).  Within a couple of minutes of starting I was elated to pick up a large group of raptors (at least 20 birds) circling over the city, but they were distant and I managed to totally lose them whilst switching from bins to 'scope!  I suspect they were Black Bazas, but can't be sure.  Otherwise I picked up two separate Accipiters, both heading SE  - one looked longer winged than the other, but views were brief so again I'm uncertain on species.  I got better views of a Peregrine that was buzzing around at lower altitude - probably one of the local birds that I see around our neighbourhood occasionally.

EDIT: There were 20,808 Black Baza seen in Chumphon today!

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