October 31 [Day 64] Strong westerly winds all day gusting to 90 km/h in the afternoon combined with temperatures that ranged from -2C to 2.5C made observation uncomfortable, but the cloud cover of 40-100% cirrus, altostratus and lenticular cloud made locating and identifying birds easy. Raptor movement started at 0835 and apart from a few gaps was fairly continuous until 1744 when the last Bald Eagle went through. At 1625 our second Gyrfalcon, an adult grey morph female, glided by which also proved to be the 7500th migrant raptor of the season; the next bird seen was the 5100th Golden Eagle of the season. As 17 of the 67 Golden Eagles seen today were juveniles it seems probable that there are still a few more birds to come through. Finches once again dominated passerine migration with significant movement of White-winged Crossbills for the first time this season: Bohemian Waxwing 16, Purple Finch 7, Grey-crowned Rosy Finch 103, Pine Grosbeak 2, Red Crossbill 38, White-winged Crossbill 26, Common Redpoll 485 and Pine Siskin 1. In October we spent 30 days at the site losing just 1 day to weather and only having 1 other day curtailed because of weather. The 344 hours spent at the site was 14.8% higher than in 2006 and in this time we counted a total of 5606 migrant raptors, 31.4% higher than last year’s October total and the highest monthly count ever conducted by RMERF. Ospreys (3) were counted in the month for the first time at the site including our latest bird ever on the 18th, the 308 Bald Eagles are 29.4% higher than last year’s count and the 9 harriers are one more than last year. The total of 657 Sharp-shinned Hawks is 48.6% above last October’s count, while the 36 Cooper’s Hawks are 28% lower and the 104 Northern Goshawks are 11.8% higher than last year. Both Red-tailed Hawk (31: -64.4%) and Rough-legged Hawk (50: -56.9%) are significantly lower than last October’s counts. It was a fabulous month for Golden Eagles with the monthly count of 4352 being 36.9% higher than last year’s October count. No American Kestrels were counted in October this year while the 19 Merlins were 9.5% less than last year and the 2 Gyrfalcons are the same. The strong peregrine movement of September continued into October with 8 birds passing, 300% more than in October last year, while the 3 migrant Prairie Falcons were 70% lower than last year. 11.17 hours (721.59) BAEA 12 (349), NOGO 3 (130), RLHA 1 (51), GOEA 67 (5105), MERL 1 (27), GYRF 1 (2) TOTAL 85 (7508)