On Sun, 5 Apr 1998, Alexandra Appleman wrote:
> We were totting up the total species seen (88) when we realised that we
> had observed 10 different raptors in a radius of 65km of Ingham.
> Is this an Australian record?
I've seen 11 species in a morning walk in Kununurra (W.A). A large
grass fire had been burning nearby for 2 days attracting thousands of
Black Kites and a mixture of other species. We saw 9 species from one
location, a town park with a good view of the fire and another 2 species
in woodland outside town.
Near the fire were: Black Kite, Square-tailed Kite, Whistling Kite,
Wedge-tailed Kite, Little Eagle, Black Falcon, Peregrine Falcon,
Australian Hobby, Brown Falcon. Outside town we saw Brown Goshawk and
Collared Sparrowhawk.
> How many other countries can equal or better this?
You can do much better without getting out of your deck-chair at the best
sites to watch US raptor migrations. I've no idea what the records are
but I've heard of single day counts of 300,000 raptors from 12 species
and 2,000 raptors from 14 species at a site in Texas.
I'd guess Kenya during the northern hemisphere winter would be the best
place in the world to get high raptor species counts. I believe 70+
raptor species occur in Kenya.
Andrew Taylor
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