Hi all,
During this morning's Raptor Watch BIGFRANK and I focused our binoculars on a big black hawk-like bird that came flying over the trees and over the centre of the park. Both of us were desperately running through the likely possibilities in our heads trying to come up with something before it flew out of view. Luckily for us the bird flew to the west end of the park and was greeted by the local crows so it turned around and gave us an even better view as it flew back over us. When Frank and I first saw it we both thought that maybe it was a very "dark-morphed" hawk or even a Black Vulture...I also thought that maybe it was a Black Hawk far far out of it's range. As it turned away from the crows, Frank called out "Common Raven" which by that time made perfect sense as it was an "all black" bird much like a crow is. The funny thing is that approximately 30 minutes earlier I was telling Frank about how I'd never seen a Common Raven in Ontario before, only at the Tower of London in England, he told me that he's only seen them over the park once in the past six years of birding there and that those birds were very high in the sky.
This sighting was way too cool for us but probably not for you folks in the north eh? - lol!!!
Tomorrow morning I think I'll talk about how I've never seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Ontario!!!
Walter
