April!

April has arrived, but despite what the the calender may say winter has been remiss in exiting the Keweenaw in any sort of an expedited manner as evidenced by the fact that Common and Hoary Redpolls, and Snow Bunting still remain the dominant species on the mountain.

Poor winds have dominated the last week and thus most days have had trouble breaking the single digits. April 2 was refreshing when a season high of 61 Bald Eagles went east past the shack. The 2nd also featured a dark morph Red-tailed Hawk, Golden Eagle, and the first Northern Harrier, Merlin, Turkey Vulture, and Lapland Longspur of the spring. Since the 2nd though things have been slow, however today’s count was fun when in the last two hours a handful of Bald Eagles and three Golden Eagles went east (it made it easier to forget the first six hours when nothing was moving).

In Copper Harbor this evening I saw my first American Robin and Red-winged Blackbird of the spring, suggesting that perhaps spring might actually be arriving here in the north (just don’t look offshore where several freighters have been stuck in the ice for the past two days).