March 26 [Day 32] (Valley View site) Clear skies allowed the temperature to fall to -18C at 0715, but clear skies all day also provided the sunshine that allowed the temperature to rise to 2C. Winds were initially NNE and relatively light, but changed to SW after 1500 gusting to 40 km/h and huge plumes of snow combing off the Livingstone Range indicated strong ridge-level winds. The cold temperatures and adverse winds meant that the first migrant Golden Eagle did not appear until 1134 and then movement was fairly steady peaking at 25 from 1300 to 1400 and again at 24 from 1800 to 1900 with the last Golden Eagles at the relatively early time of 1907. The Golden Eagle at 1834 was the 2000th of the season and occurred at almost exactly the same time as the 2000th bird last year. Fifteen percent of the Golden Eagles were immature: 5 subadults and 10 juveniles. The resident pair of Golden Eagles was conspicuous with the male displaying on several occasions, but there was no sign of the third “resident” adult. Yesterday at 1707, however, I saw an adult Golden Eagle fly south that was missing a couple of primary feathers: probably the loser in last Tuesday’s fight! At 1414 the season’s first gull flew high to the north above the ridge closely pursued by what appeared to be a dark-morph jaeger: there are very few spring jaeger records in Alberta. 12.42 hours (338.9) BAEA 15 (222), NOGO 2 (29), RTHA 2 (5), GOEA 103 (2012) TOTAL 122 (2296)
Mount Lorette (Cliff Hansen) Conditions were very similar with the temperature ranging from -16C to 3C, cloudless skies alleviated only by aircraft contrails and ridge winds strong SW. Movement also started late with the first bird, a Bald Eagle, not moving until 1248 and the first Golden Eagle not until 1410, but movement was then fairly steady until the last Golden Eagle flew to the NW at 1842. Birds were often flying high away from the ridge and were hard to detect in the blue sky. 12.5 hours (244.7) BAEA 2 (24), GOEA 42 (577) TOTAL 44 (616)