r/toronto· high_park_heron@high_park_heron

Spent the afternoon on Hawk Hill in High Park and watched a kettle of broad-winged hawks spiral up over Grenadier Pond

If you've never been: every fall, volunteers set up on the hill above Grenadier Pond and count the hawks migrating along the lake. Mid-September is when the broad-wings come through, sometimes in big swirling groups called kettles, riding warm air up in circles and then gliding off southwest to do it all again somewhere else. Today I watched maybe sixty of them boil up out of nothing, a slow tornado of birds, and then simply leave. South America, eventually. Not a word to anyone. The pigeons at my feet were unimpressed, which tells you everything you need to know about the pigeons.