Hawk Mountain Sanctuary hosted the annual Kittatinny
Roundtable this past weekend. HMANA
vice-chair Laurie Goodrich organized the event, which this year also included
HMANA’s new executive director, Jane Ferreyra; monitoring site coordinator
Julie Brown; HMANA chair Carolyn Hoffman and board members Wavell Fogleman,
Rich Conroy and Brian Wargo. Also attending were site coordinators from the
Kittatinny ridge area of Pennsylvania, also with participation from several
Maryland and Delaware sites.
Laurie’s agenda always includes a mix of current raptor
research and a roundup of the year’s spring and fall migration. We heard about Laurie’s broad-winged hawk
migration project, which involves trapping several hawks, attaching very small
solar-powered transmitters and then monitoring where they are. Her research documents their speed, path
south, where they eventually winter, and their path back north. You can learn more about this exciting work here
We also heard from hawkwatcher extraordinaire Paul Fritz, who
showed us his method of keeping his scope stable during strong winds. Paul’s weighted mesh net, with its low center of
gravity, has kept his scope upright from Alaska to Pennsylvania.
Brian Wargo shared details about his junior hawkwatcher
program, which is modeled somewhat on the national junior ranger program. He has produced a variety of materials to
engage children and youth in the fun of hawkwatching. These can be downloaded and customized for
any site. The templates and full details can be found here.
We also learned about the curricula a Hawk Mountain intern
has developed for use in schools. Also, the
Pennsylvania Biological Survey’s Northern Goshawk project, which is documenting the decline of
nesting by these birds in the state, was another topic. Finally, but not least, we discussed last
year’s migration itself, looking for trends around each site’s big days (or
lack thereof) for several species of raptors. For example, we could clearly see that bald eagles are migrating in
large numbers throughout the fall, and that as their numbers increase, reports
of osprey sightings decrease, except along the coastal sites.
As ever the roundtable was great fun and a great way for
hawkwatchers from many sites to talk about hawks during summer months when hawkwatching
is a bit slim. The roundtable lets us interact with the hawkwatchers we don’t
normally get to see because once migration starts we are each at our own sites. Thanks again to Laurie for organizing this always
informative and fun annual event.
FYI: HMANA is working
towards organizing similar events for other areas, too. All that is needed is to find central
locations where several migration sites are clustered within a few hours
driving distance of each other. The
Great Lakes area and New England are two that would appear to be candidates for
a similar event.
