The Eagles are Coming
(Don't mind me posting for the first time in four plus years! š I will make no promises about getting more consistent, but I'll try.)
But firstā¦ The Joys of Local Listing
(Skip to the next subheading if you just want to hear the birding account.)
Ah, the endless possibilities of birding. If listing is your thing, the options are boundless. You can keep a world list, a country list, a state/province list, a 5 mile radius list, a ādesignated birding area" (e.g. the Hamilton Study Area) list, a county list, a yard list, a list of birds you see roosting on a specific tree or structure, a list of birds you see while driving, a list of birds you see on your commute, a list of 4-letter banding codes you see on license plates, etc. etc. ad infinitumā¦and you can keep life lists, year lists, seasonal lists, and month lists for any and all of the above.
Whatever your flavour, thereās a list for you. Listing gets a bad rap, and it sure can make it tough to appreciate the birds for their intrinsic worth as opposed to their numerical value, but I think whatever gets people out birding is a net positive (thatās why eBird added the top 100!).
Recently, Iāve grown fond of local birding, especially county, patch, and yard listing. This is mostly due to necessity: having two kids and saving for a mortgage makes driving all over the province like I used to a lot less feasible. Ironically, limiting myself to a small geographic area has been one of the most freeing evolutions in my birding journey. I know this might āsound like copeā (as the kids are saying), but let me explain. Now that Iāve finally come to be at peace with missing rarities in far-flung corners of the province, my stress levels have gone way down. I donāt need to clear my schedule on a momentās notice to head to Ottawa mid-week, and if I check the forecast and there are fallout conditions at Pelee in a few days, yes I would love to be there just for the experience, but Iām not pulling my hair out worrying about what one-hour-(or, worse, flyby-)wonder I might miss by not being there. I acknowledge that you can get carried away with local listing too, but there are going to be far fewer reports of rarities you feel compelled to chase, and the ones you do are not going to be more than thirty minutes away (at least in Hamilton county). When you do away with big areas and tight time constraints (Big Years, for example), the more mindful, rejuvenating types of birding float to the surface. You become attuned to local trends: one day, you might clock that a certain species has arrived on masse the night before, or you find a hidden gem of a spot like a water drip or brush pile that's particularly productive for certain species. You won't feel the obligation to go to every hotspot in an area in a short amount of time because you fear you might not be back in a while. Instead, you can explore them at your own leisure over an entire season or more. You won't be able to see as many birds in a small area, but that makes for a fun challenge. For example, there may only be minimal shorebird habitat in your county, but that will make a fairly commonplace bird like a Black-bellied Plover touching down there for a few hours all the more exciting.
I donāt mean to demean white-knuckle, provincial birding ā it brought me lots of joy for many years, and I will likely get back into it in moderation once my kids get older. There is immense value in exploring new areas; going to remote places; enjoying long road trips with friends; and enduring all manner of wild adventures here, there, and everywhere, but narrowing your scope to a smaller area and getting to intimately know its Easter eggs and idiosyncrasies is a unique and enlightening challenge that I am so happy Iāve discovered.
Recently, I have become very invested in my Hamilton county list. It is where I have lived all my life, though during my obsessive birding āpubescence,ā I spent most of my time elsewhere in the province. (Why be in Hamilton in the spring when you can be at Pelee? Or in Hamilton in the summer when you can be in Rainy River or Carden? Hamilton is at least marginally outclassed in almost every category of provincial birding, aside from fall lakewatching and winter ducking!)
The Quest for Golden Eagles
In the last couple years, Golden Eagle (GOEA) has proved itself to be one of my most slippery Hamilton nemeses. While it is expected annually in the county, it is fairly uncommon even during the peak of its migration window. There are a few reasons. In the early part of their window, GOEAs are, at best, one per several hundred raptors. In mid to late October, most migrant raptors are Turkey Vultures (TUVUs). So, unless you get very lucky, to see a GOEA you have to find large raptor concentrations. Knowing how to come by concentrations of migrating birds is, by most estimations, the key to excellent birding in the spring and fall. Go to a vegetated spit of land after a night of south winds in the spring and you might find a bunch of migrating songbirds. Go to a shoreline thatās being battered by a wind system pushing in from a big body of water in the fall, and you might see jaegers. Go to a little patch of greenery isolated in the middle of flat land or an urban environment during migration and you might encounter a pocket of hungry songbirds.
The key is weather and geography. Raptors migrate diurnally. In the fall, they are of course migrating south, so you want to look for winds with a north component. The Ontario shoreline of Lake Ontario runs more or less west to east. A north wind thatās perpendicular to this shoreline will concentrate the moving birds against the shore, since raptors hate travelling over big water (with some exceptions like Northern Harriers and Short-eared Owls). Many will move east to west along the north shore before dispersing near Cootes Paradise and continuing on down toward Lake Erie where the same and arguably a more impressive concentrating effect occurs. The tricky thing about Hamilton is that it just barely catches the western-most extent of the lake's concentrating geography. At about Woodland Cemetery, which is just barely in Hamilton county, birds will hit a crossroads: 1) the High Level Bridge, which ushers them south toward uninterrupted land stretching as far as the eye can see; or 2) continue WSW around the north shore of the last little corner of the lake (Cootes Paradise).
Personally, Iām not a big fan of hawkwatching from Woodland cemetery because there is not an unimpeded 180 view to the north. High Level Bridge has an unrivalled panorama, and is often my go to, but it can be frustrating to see a lot of raptors passing by to the north, just out of reach for confident identification. I've spent many hours here during October and November 2024ā2025. Iāve been curious about this spotĀ on Old Guelph Road near Hopkins Tract. "Hawk-pkins" Hawkwatch as I'm affectionately calling it is about as far east as you can get in Hamilton county on the north side of Cootes, and itās midway up the climb of that part of the Niagara Escarpment. Itās a mostly unimpeded view to the east and north, and thereās a convenient pull-off that can fit three to four cars. It's also just SW of Gate of Heaven Cemetery, which is a tried a true hawkwatching spot just across the border in Halton county (I saw a GOEA there last year), so it stands to reason that it would have a similar success rate. I havenāt tried Hawk-pkins properly during good conditions until this past Saturday.
This past Saturday, 17 October, promised good conditions, with a nice hearty breeze coming from the NNW. My son went down for his nap just as my daughter fell asleep in her car seat, so I left him with my wife and took her with me. We were joined at Hawk-pkins by Sean Bates.
I wasnāt necessarily expecting a GOEA. It was a few days before their peak window, and even during that andĀ with a whole day of perfect winds, they are no guarantee in Hamilton. Cloud cover is also more conducive to hawkwatching since spotting raptors in the blue can be challenging; there was literally not a cloud in the sky on the 17th.
Right away, however, we were happy to note that we had found the main flight line, at least for the time being. Vultures were predictably abundant, though nothing crazy. We clicked 285 during the 2.5 hours we were there (there was a spell where numbers dropped off due to the flightline shifting farther east). Early on, I saw a small group of distant geese heading toward Cootes. One was obviously puny and stubby-necked compared to its travelling mates (Canada Geese), making it a Cackling Goose, a nice non-raptor surprise. Later, Sean spotted a light morph Rough-legged Hawk in the middle of the blue, and it ended up cruising over just north of us, giving nice views. We had two Bald Eagles and a handful of both Cooperās and Sharp-shinned Hawks.
I was reminded that hawkwatching is one of the most fun types of stationary watches. Raptors are undeniably majestic, and seeing large numbers soaring over lovely panoramic views is a nice way to spend a day. You know whatās not fun though? When you go to start your car at the end of the hawkwatch and the battery is dead.ā¦
My little one had woken up and was soon to be in need of a feed from her mama, so I started packing up around 3:35. The automotive gods had other ideas. My Mazda was completely unresponsive to my turning the key. A friendly neighbour crossed the road with his jumper cables to help us, but jumping the battery using Seanās car was fruitless. Sean graciously took my daughter back home to my wife, while I called CAA. They arrived in uncharacteristic short order and were able to boost it without much trouble, so it could have been a lot worse. The ordeal afforded me a few extra (GOEA-less) minutes of hawkwatching, and I headed home around 4:20. Check out the full eBird checklist from Hawk-pkins here.
My house is about three kilometres ESE of the western most extent of Lake Ontario, but it is more or less due south of the High Level Bridge. Itās very much not in the main flightline, and we only get the afterglow of a concentrating effect by the time raptors hit my airspace, but we get trickles of raptors and the occasional small kettle of TUVUs or Red-tailed Hawks (RTHAs) on a really good day.
Upon arriving home, I hung out in the driveway for a little while with the engine running to give the battery a good recharge. Naturally, I kept my eyes on the newly widened gap in the neighbourhood trees (my front yard maple had recently been taken down because its falling branches had crushed a car and broken some eavestroughs). I noted two RTHA, one unidentified buteo, and two TUVUs wander by, heading south. As I was packing up my optics, a dark, long-winged bird appeared high up, doing lazy circles with a RTHA. I saw the pale base of the tail in my binoculars, and promptly went into panic mode. I quickly snapped some pictures then busted by scope out of the trunk and practically did summersaults on my front driveway trying to point it straight up to find the speck in a sea of blue at 88x magnification. I never got on it.Ā
Could it really be? I should have stayed on it with my bins to confirm the ID rather than hurriedly snapping probably unidentifiable photos and ambitiously attempting to get it in the scope! Rookie mistake, Ezra!
Before I had time to examine the photos, another eagle appeared! Holy $@&%! A slam dunk immature GOEA! I snapped record shots, put my eye to the already primed scope, and, using as a guide the spire of the young tree the city had planted to replace our old maple, tilted up to get some lovely diagnostic views of the eagle as it cruised purposefully south.
Upon scruitinising my photos of the first bird, it turned out to also be a GOEA, a more mature bird.
Two GOEAs over my poorly situated yard after spending almost three hours hawkwatching from a prime location?! Remember when I said, "Unless you get very lucky, to see a GOEA [in Hamilton] you have to find large raptor concentrations"? Well, I guess I got very very lucky, because I only saw eight raptors over my yard in the ~45 minutes I watched from there, and two of them were GOEAs! And I was only still looking because of my car troubles. A very happy accident indeed. What a way to get Hamilton county #278 and yard bird #107!
Red-necked Grebe (my other Hamilton nemesis): Iām coming for you!
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