Hawkwatching Fun at Annual Kittatinny Roundtable

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. 

Hawk gifts for the holidays

On my own blog I've always thrown together some ideas for what to get the avid birder in your life for a Holiday Gift. This year I thought I try and pick out some rare gems that might be cherished by the most avid of your hawkwatching friends. Or maybe you can just add them to the list you send to Santa.

Hawkwatching T-shirts - Birdspot

Cool Apparel 

I know it’s winter, but nothing makes a HMANA Winter Raptor Survey (details here) go more smoothly than having a comfortable and super cool hawk t-shirt on beneath your layers of smartwool and silk long underwear. I may be a little biased, but I reckon there probably aren’t many super cool t-shirts designed by hawkwatchers for hawkwatchers; including my favorite ‘I watch hawks. For a living.’ You can find more cool hawkwatching shirts here.

For the ladies, perhaps something a little more swanky to wear: how about these super cute bird necklaces and earrings from Piper NYC (here).

And on the practical level: keep the sun off your head or neck, create a temporary sling, have a cloth for cleaning up spills and be able to twitch birds in dodgy Los Angeles neighborhoods (choose colors carefully). All that, and use that same item for identifying the raptor that just flew over your head: Hawk Mountain Hawk Bandana (here).

HMANA Membership, Hawkcount etc

Give the gift of giving. If you want to do something awesome for hawks, hawkwatches and hawkwatchers this holiday, perhaps a gift membership of the Hawk Migration Association of North America (membership page here), sign up to support the hawkcount page of your local hawkwatch (here) or if you really want to treat yourself perhaps join us for a trip to witness the majesty of hawk migration at Braddock Bay or the Florida Keys next year (here).

Movies

Though a classic in the UK (rated as one of the ten best British Movies of all time by the BFI) I don't think many US movie fans are aware of the wonderful Kes. The story line revolves a young teenage outsider who finds purpose when he starts to train a Kestrel he takes from a nest from a local farm. It's an awesome movie and probably the only one where a hawk takes center stage. It's also rated by the BFI as one of their top fifty children's films. Available on Amazon (here).

Books

There have been a slew of excellent raptor ID books in recent years. The reworked classic Hawks in Flight and Jerry Liguori's two guides have set the bar pretty high. This year saw the release of the Crossley Raptor Guide. The guide takes Crossley's innovative approach to field guides and is a book any hawkwatching aficionado would want in their library (available in all good stores). You, or the recipient of the gift, can come and get it signed by Richard himself at the HMANA Conference in April (find out more here). 

I've been lucky enough to be asked to review Conor Mark Jameson's Looking for the Goshawk. It's a fine read and definitely one that those with an interest in raptors and raptor conservation will have an interest in. It's combines being both nicely written as well as being informative.

Beyond the world of just raptors, the book of the year bird wise in many estimations is Mark Cocker's Birds and People. The book charts mans relationships with birds and their importance to us as simply food or as part of our recreation, art, origin stories and religion. The photography by David Tipling (website here) only adds to this fantastic tome. 

Adopt a Hawk - BBRR 

Adopt a Hawk

This always struck me as being the awesome gift for the birder/hawkwatcher who has everything - their own bird. Worth noting that you don't get to actually take the hawk home, as one of the 'adopters' at Braddock Bay thought one time - bless 'em. What you do get though is an awesome image of your bird a certificate with details on the bird and the promise that you will be updated if the bird is recaptured in the future. I know Hawk Ridge in Duluth have this as an option to support their work (here) and so does Braddock Bay Raptor Research (here) and I am sure there are others.

Raptor Bytes - hawkwatching morsels from around the web

PBS Earthflight

I hope that many of you have been able to catch the stunning Earthflight series on PBS. The next episode is airing tomorrow, September the 25^th and is set in South America. You can see previews, bonus footage and the three already aired episodes on the PBS website here (link). To get some idea of the incredible footage that the series includes watch the video above of Long-legged Buzzard hunting Rock Pigeons in Jodhpur, India. For Sci-Fi fans and anglophiles you might want to watch the BBC version on YouTube which is narrated by ex-Doctor Who actor David Tennant. 

Male Northern Harrier - Vic Berardi

Easy Harriers?

The Grey Ghost is a much sought after and venerated raptor at any hawk watch. It certainly seems to be high on most people’s favorites list when you discuss raptors with aficionados. That said it always seems to raise the question: ‘why do you see so few male harriers?’ Well, back in April the American Birding Association published a fascinating article in their magazine: Birding (available to members) by Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan suggesting one potential reason. It is known that many 2nd cycle males hold a brownish plumage, but the article notes that many male harriers continue to be brownish birds well past their second year. You can read the article for yourselves as the ABA have kindly posted a PDF of the article online here (link). Bird banding expert Peter Pyle wrote a rebuttal of the argument in the letters page of the July/August issue of Birding which also had a response to that rebuttal from Liguori and Sullivan. Fascinating stuff.

Liguori Blog

Incidentally the latest posting on Jerry’s excellent blog (here) is all about aging ‘brown’ juvenile/female type harriers and the need to be careful when doing so. If you haven’t already checked out Jerry’s blog,  make sure you add it to your reading list as it is absolutely packed with fun, fascinating and useful blog posts about raptor identification and more.

Hawkwatchers - Luke Tiller

Florida Keys Birding and Wildlife Festival

How I wish I were heading for the Florida Keys Hawkwatch this week! Today sees the start of the Florida Keys Birding and Wildlife Festival, which runs through until Sunday. You can check out the events on the festival website (here).  The hawkwatch runs through until early November and boasts massive flights of Peregrine Falcons, southern raptor specialties, Florida bird specialties and being perhaps the only hawkwatch in the US where you have any chance of having a Short-tailed Hawk catching some thermals with a Magnificent Frigatebird! You can check out the hawkwatch website here (link). It’s also the destination for HMANA’s much anticipated tour in 2014, more detail on our website (here).

American Kestrel - Luke Tiller

Crossley added to Hawk Mountain Board

Richard Crossley of bird identification fieldguide fame (including the excellent Crossley ID Guide: Raptors) and one of the driving forces behind the Pledge to Fledge: an organization focused on promoting birding across the globe (website here) has recently been added to the board at Hawk Mountain. It’s good to see such a tireless advocate for birds and birding added to their board.

Kittatinny Roundtable

On Saturday I attended the 2010 Kittatinny Roundtable at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a really fun day that I always look forward to. Could anything be better on a sweltering midsummer day than sitting in cool surroundings with a group of hawkwatchers talking about the 2009 hawk migration season?

Hosted by Hawk Mountain and newly-minted PhD. Laurie Goodrich, their senior monitoring biologist, this year hawk counters came from as far away as Allegheny Front hawkwatch in the west to the northern New Jersey sites in the east. I think Picatinny Peak had to drive the farthest but I didn’t do the math on that. In any event, counters from Rose Tree Park, Scotts Mountain, Montclair, Bake Oven Knob, Hawk Mountain, Waggoners Gap, Jacks Mountain and Militia Hill were also there.

The format of the roundtable discussion is that for selected species we look at the peak migration day of the season and the total season count for that species. Was the peak day earlier or later than usual? Who got the big Broad-winged Hawk flight? Did one site have a terrible result but the neighboring site do well? How did weather impact this past season? How do the results look when compared with previous years? The discussions help to provide a more regional perspective on the past season than is possible when only looking at results from a single site.

A few sites claimed “bragging rights” this time around. Militia Hill near Philadelphia tallied more Broad-winged Hawks for the season than any other eastern site with their 13,436 and 7600 on their big day. Allegheny Front posted more Golden Eagles than any other eastern site with 204. The 2009 season turned out to be a bit lackluster for most of the sites. Nothing looked disastrous, with even the American Kestrel posting numbers a bit higher than we’ve seen over the past few years. The Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon are major successes virtually everywhere. Overall, the seasonal numbers looked about average, perhaps a tad below average, but only a tad.

But even a lackluster migration season can’t dampen the enthusiasm when you put all those hawkwatchers and counters in the same room for a day. It’s not often that we get a chance to get together and talk about hawks all day with other hawkwatchers, and that alone is well worth the drive.