Thursday, March 22, 2012
It's Time for RAPTORTHON!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Hawkwatching As Meditation
If all this is too “New Age” for your tastes, I apologize! But for so many of us, even those entrenched in analyzing the vast amount of data that hawkwatchers produce each season, I believe that there is an almost spiritual underpinning for our passion, one core to our reasons for spending some slice of our lives doing this and not some other activity. With many spring sites now online and posting daily to HawkCount, I find myself with a bit of Zugunruhe as I prepare to depart to the Midwest US to conduct my own count. Or, perhaps, it’s really just a twinge of envy for those hawkwatchers fortunate enough to have counts that start earlier than mine. In any case, my feeling is not logical, and I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way. So I share some of my feelings for why I do what I do should you have the same yearnings each year to use your time at your favorite hawkwatch to take in as much of the world around as you possible; and, if only for a moment, to see past many of the expectations we impose on ourselves and simply Enjoy.
From all of us at HMANA,
May spring bring you spirited flight!
Thursday, March 1, 2012
New Hawk Migration Studies arriving soon!
Here’s just a little of what you will find inside. Greg Grove analyzes years of winter raptor surveys and reports on findings. Arthur Green tells us about his fall hawkwatching season in the Republic of Georgia. How does more than 800,000 birds sound? Janice Sweet reports on a not-so-great 2010 fall season at the Illinois Beach hawkwatch. HMANA’s new board and officers are listed, and former Chair Will Weber is back as the new board chair for 2012, so his Will’s Quills column is back, too. Julie Brown reports on the new Raptor Population Index trend analysis that includes lots more hawkwatches and hawkwatch data. And all the new from the flyway reports are there, too. Of course.
Look for the spring HMS coming soon to your mailbox.