Hawkcount as a resource

Hawkcount as a resource

One of HMANA’s most valuable assets is its online database Hawkcount(created by Jason Sodergren). As well as being a useful place for counts across the US and beyond to store their sightings, the data provides a number of useful functions for those that want to dip their toe into the world of hawkwatching. (Note you can click on all the images in this article and make them larger).

Hawkcount: Home Page

Finding recent daily count details

From the front page of Hawkcount you have a couple of options for drilling down into the data contained within. First up when counts are in progress you can see the daily results from the various counts on the front page and click through for more data. You can see from the screenshot that I took this early in August when just a few counts are online, but if the days count from Rockfish Gap is what you were after then you can click through straight from the Hawkcount home page. 

Hawkcount: Individual Count Daily Report

This will show you the day’s count and if you are lucky a forecast for the next days or next few days*. From there you can click on the “Site Profile” link to get into data related to migration timing and more seasonal related count data (more on those below).

Hawkcount: Count Map/Pulldown Page

Finding a count

First and foremost, Hawkcount can help you find a local hawkwatch to visit. Everyone’s heard of Cape May (where we are running this year’s HMANA Get-together), but how many of you can name the other nine currently functioning New Jersey based hawkwatches on Hawkcount? To find them click on the little map at the top of HMANA’s Hawkcount website and you will enter a page (photo above) where you can either use a pull down menu, click on a state to bring up a map of hawkwatches in that state or use the list of countries, states and provinces at the bottom of the page to find a hawkwatch near you. 

Hawkcount: State Counts

Note in the example for NY State (above) you can see on the list below the map whether they are a fall or spring hawkwatch, whether they are active (check when the last data was collected) and where they are located. If you click one of the sites you can then start getting a whole load more information. Be aware the counts only show in the map of the state you have clicked on, to see other counts in other states you need to go back and click on the other state you are interested in.

Hawkcount: Individual Counts - Site Profile

Individual Count Information – Site Profile

Once you’ve located a count that you might want to visit you can click through onto the individual count's page and start to find out a whole load more about them (see screenshot above). Most sites are going to give you a set of basic information about them including contact details for them including websites, directions to the site and information like the dates of their count season.

Hawkcount: Individual Counts - Migration Timing 

You can however start to drill down much further into the data. Given Braddock Bay as an example: If you were trying to say work out when it would be a good time to visit if you wanted to see a big flight of Turkey Vultures you can click the “Migration Timing” tab (see screenshot above). This would allow you to see general trends for migration timing in the bar chart but also see historically when the largest flights have occurred. Looking at that historical data, to see a big flight of TV’s at Braddock would see you visiting the first week of April into the early portion of the second week.

Individual Count Information – Latest Count Data

If you were targeting certain species, a good time to visit a watch for peak migration at a watch or even just wanting to see how often there was a counter on site that would be one way to approach things. The other way would be to look at their count data directly. From the counts "Site Profile" page you hit the “Latest Count Data” link (top right on the site profile page). 

Hawkcount: Individual Counts - Latest Count Data

From there you can change the month or year using the pulldown menu on the left (see above screenshot). If you go to May 2016 you can see that Braddock has someone out almost every day that month unless the weather precluded a counter being able to get out. Some other sites you will see are much less frequently manned. If you want to go to a site and have some company, make sure you find a site to visit with regular coverage.

If you scroll further down the page you can do some fun comparison work and compare previous seasons at a certain count. By clicking on the previous month comparison tab (which will show you that sites historical data by month, or that sites historical data by season). If you scroll all the way down, you can see the day by day reports (see screenshot below).

Hawkcount: Individual Counts - Season/Monthly Comparison

These are just a few ways that you can use Hawkcount to help you find a count, plan a visit to a count, keep up with recent days at your local watch and even get a forecast for upcoming count days. Sometimes I just enjoy some vicarious hawkwatching by scrolling through the recent reports! You can visit the website here.

* If you are lucky at the end of the information included in the day’s count there might be a “Forecast” for the next day or upcoming days. I must say that as a hawkwatcher I mildly loathed the forecast section for the following reasons: 1/ if you put in a bad forecast it means anyone who reads it probably won’t come down - guaranteeing you a lonely visitor free day 2/ If you put that it is likely to be good and it somehow turns out not to be then I worried that people would blame me for making them come all the way out to the watch 3/ who wants to jinx a potentially good day by touting it online beforehand?

More HawkCount reviewers needed!

The HMANA Data Committee and Board have re-initiated a review of HawkCount data entry in an effort to reduce errors and encourage documentation for rare species observations. Prior to the shift to digital data entry, HawkCount paper forms were previously reviewed for accuracy.

The reviewers listed below by state, province or region have kindly volunteered to serve in this capacity starting in spring 2016. Because more HawkCount sites operate during the fall migration, we will be expanding this review process and will need additional volunteers starting in late summer 2016. Contact Gerald J. Niemi (gniemi@umn.edu) if interested.  

Reviewer                            Count Area(s)   

Zach Smith                        Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 

                                              New Brunswick, Quebec

Paul Roberts                      Connecticut, Massachusetts

Andy Mason                      New York

Laurie Goodrich                Pennsylvania

Holly Merker

Tom Reed                           Delaware, Maryland, 

                                              New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia

John Barker                        Eastern Ontario

Markus Mika                     Arkansas, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, 

                                              Western Ontario, Wisconsin

Neil Paprocki                     Alaska, Arizona, Colorado

Alan Fish                           California

Arthur Green                      Montana, Texas, Mexico, Central 

                                              and South America 

1.3 Million Hawks and Counting.....

Militia Hill Hawk Watch displaying its banner during IHMW.
Photo by Rich Conroy.

Congratulations to the 102 watchsites from Ontario to Mexico that counted over 1 million raptors during HMANA’s 2nd annual International Hawk Migration Week (IHMW) September 19-27, 2015. 

Thirty-one states and provinces counted thirty species of raptors, the vast majority being Broad-winged Hawks (1,304,132) - since IHMW took place during their peak migration. Other high counts included 23,244 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 6,659 Turkey Vultures, 6,182 Mississippi Kites, 5,696 American Kestrels and 3,661 Osprey.

Graham Scarborough, Eli Gross and Dave Youker
at Kiptopeke, VA. Photo by Brian Taber.

 HMANA started IHMW in 2014 as a way to celebrate raptor migration. We wanted to shine a light on the incredible spectacle that takes place each fall and highlight all the watchsites in the HawkCount monitoring network. 

Jerry Ligouri raptor talk, Celebration of Flight,
Corpus Christi, TX. Photo by Patty Waits Beasley

It’s the perfect opportunity to connect people with the cycle of migration. I think many of my fellow hawk watchers would agree that one of the great joys is introducing someone to a big flight or low-flying peregrine for the first time. It gives my goose bumps to see the excitement in their eyes. Recently during a spectacular flight of broad-wings at my local watchsite, I heard a man say, “Wow, I feel like a better person having witnessed this.”

So the goal of IHMW is to share these experiences with others. And I think we were successful in that. In addition to submitting daily counts to HawkCount.org, sites celebrated across the map with various hawk watching festivals, identification workshops and live bird of prey events. Some celebrations included a handful of people on remote mountaintops while other events drew thousands to multi-day festivals but no matter the size, it all revolved around the love of raptors and the pure joy of migration.

For more information about IHMW, please visit www.hmana.org. 

Hawk watchers at Wellsville Hawk Watch, UT. Photo by Neil Paprocki

Fall Hawkwatching Basics: Where and When

Hawkwatching - Braddock Bay, NY

As a seasoned hawkwatcher this is a conversation that I have had sadly all too often: on a deathly slow day someone shows up at the watch and asks ‘how is it going’. After you’ve relayed the bad news about winds from the wrong direction and a band of blocking rain to the north they say something like “but it looked like you had a great day yesterday”.

A quote I once read started ‘yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is a dream…’ and that’s the truth about hawkwatching. To get the most out of the hawkwatching experience you need to become something of an amateur meteorologist, or at least look at the weather forecast once in a while. Like much birding during migration, weather is going to play a key part in your success. Though I have been relayed charming stories about the early years of hawkwatching, that were spent looking for birds on previously set dates each fall regardless of the fact that it was perhaps pouring with rain that day, we now understand that there is a slightly more scientific approach to actually seeing some birds at a hawkwatch.

Hawkwatching - Texas

The rest of the quote I referenced above runs ‘…today is a gift.’, so even if you find yourself at the watch on one of those slow days don’t despair. You might still make the best of it by learning some stuff from the hawkwatcher or others there at the watch. It’s generally much easier to glean some information from hawkwatchers on slow days, when they will be thankful for some company, than on madcap days when they are trying to keep up with a huge flight. On those days it might be best advised to not talk to them at all ;) Also even on the slower days, you never know what might show up. I always say it only takes one bird to dramatically change the complexion of how a day’s birding went.

To cover the basics of Fall migration, though each watch will have its own ideal wind and weather conditions, to generalize you are looking to head out on days with northerly winds (blowing from the north – sometimes that isn’t clear to people) to bring birds southwards and hopefully past your watch. Sometimes a watch might do better on northwest winds sometimes northeast depending on the location. In fact, once you become more expert in meteorological matters and your local watches, sometimes the direction and strength winds are blowing might sway which local watch you decide to visit on a certain day. You may also want to check whether rain might dampen the flight. That said, rain is not always a reason not to head out, I have sometimes had some good days watching between light showers and often huge flights can be formed ahead of a storm system.  

Hawkwatching - Quaker Ridge, CT

Weather discussions perhaps assumes that you even know where to go looking for a regularly staffed hawkwatch site? To find a local watch site you can check out the hawkcount website map and click the individual states to find out where your local counts are (link here). Some counts happen in spring, some counts are in fall and some are both. You can click on the individual site link to find out general information about each site. If you click the “migration timing” tab you can get a feel for the usual peaks and troughs of the sites season and by clicking “latest count data” you can usually gauge how regularly the watch is covered.

If you want to find out what the forecast for the hawk flight is like for the next day you can sometimes read this on the individual daily reports from reporting sites (example here). These individual reports are viewable on the front page on Hawkcount (link here). As I write this post it’s currently pretty early on in the season so only a handful of sites are regularly reporting right now. Having had to write those forecasts myself and knowing how unlikely they are to be 100% accurate I understand why counters sometimes feel reluctant to complete that section, but they are more likely to when it at least looks promising the following day.

Hawkwatching - Israel

Keep an eye on the HMANA blog through the fall season, as we will be posting more articles aimed at cluing in beginner and intermediate level hawkwatchers on how to get the most out of the hawkwatching experience over the next few weeks.

A version of this piece was originally posted on Luke Tiller's blog Underclearskies (link here).

And they are off!

Clickers - Catherine Hamilton

It's started! Southbound migration. Here in Los Angeles those tiny terrors: Rufous Hummingbirds are back and bullying all and sundry at the feeders as they make their way south for the winter. Down along the LA River and out in the desert beyond the San Gabriel Mountains, shorebirds, terns and swallows are starting to pile up at the usual watery oases. Though just a trickle of landbirds so far, we aren't so far removed from the migrant flood.

Though most 'Fall' watches won't start up for a couple of weeks yet it was exciting to see the first flight of raptors reported on Hawkcount from Congaree Bluffs, SC (report here). It always seems weird to me to talk about Fall migration when most of my non-birding friends are still in the middle of their beach season. Of course in reality some birds are on the move most of the year and it always amuses me to think that while many hawkwatch sites are tallying southbound migration, up at the Braddock Bay Hawkwatch in NY (home of the HMANA Raptor ID Workshop) they are counting the northbound push of post breeding dispersal along the Great Lakes (read about the phenomenon here).

Red-tailed Hawk - Luke Tiller

Reading that report from South Carolina I find myself imagining the excitement of seeing those initial couple of migrant raptors breaking over the horizon, as well as enjoying the other soaring birds like Wood Storks and Anhingas as they float by. I wonder if I am the only one out there that gets a vicarious thrill from looking at the day's reports in Hawkcount and reading through the highs and lows of other peoples days out hawkwatching? Being in the Los Angeles Basin means that there is little in the way of any visual migration of raptors, or anything else for that matter, so being able to scan through the reports in the evening is about as close as I get.

I start with sites that I know well: either ones I have counted at or that I have visited. That way you know what you've missed by being miles away, or maybe just stuck in the office all day. As well as keeping up with known sites I also just enjoy looking through and reading the reports, appreciating the descriptions of the flights, the humor of the counters or even just sympathizing with the frustrations of a seasons developments. The real highlight for me though is to look at those sites with mind-boggling flights in Texas, Mexico and Panama and try to imagine the panic, joy and insanity a day with two million raptors might cause (Hawkcount report for Cerro Ancon, Panama here).

Braddock Bay Hawkwatchers - Luke Tiller

Am I alone in this? Or are there other online hawkwatchers enjoying the seasons flight from the comfort of their own office? Of course I have to say that being there for the flights would be better, but when you can't, at least for me, there is always Hawkcount! Maybe I should start a hawkwatchers anonymous for those of us deprived of the real thing by location, work or whatever else in life is getting in the way?

And they are off...

Northern Harrier - Kimberly Kaufman

As July turns into August and southbound migration begins to gather apace, hawkwatches across the country start to get into gear for the oncoming raptors. I am sure that many readers here are already starting to eagerly anticipate both the arrival of hawks at their local watches and the chance to get together with friends that they may not have seen much of for the last nine months. A few watches will be starting their counts today and as we roll further into the month of August we will see more and more watches come online. You can, of course, keep up with all the daily developments across the continent on Hawkcount.org (link here).

Northern Harrier - Ashli Maruster Gorbet

Everyone loves a 'Gray Ghost', but recently it seems like there just haven't been enough of them around. Participants at the Kittatinny Roundtable gathering (see previous post) observed a notable decline in Northern Harrier numbers at New Jersey and Pennsylvania count sites last Fall, with Hawk Mountain tallying their lowest total since 1942. Northern Harrier is a species of special concern in a number of the states our watches are conducted in, and that I have counted at, but with highly variable returns watch numbers currently show little in the way of any concrete overall picture of how they are fairing. It does however feel like numbers have been trending down for a few Falls now. In the Northeast the figures seem to back this up with five out of the last six seasons being poor ones that are down below average. It'll be interesting to see if this continues and whether a trend is developing.

When I was counting in Connecticut my friend Tom just insisted we weren't staying late enough in the day to catch them all and I think he was only kind of joking. Anyway something to note and perhaps a species to maybe focus a little effort on collecting solid data on. As well as being fun, hawkwatching, and the data collected, can play an important part in the puzzle that helps us work out what is happening with individual raptor species.

Northern Harrier - Alex Lamoreaux

Of course many watches like to go above and beyond merely identifying passing individuals to species to aging and sexing birds and this of course can add value to collected data. Harriers ostensibly are one of the easiest raptors to do this with as juveniles, adult females and adult males are all theoretically pretty readily identifiable in the field. That said as with all birding activities that require parsing of information with birds that are in view for a short period of time, in bad light, or at distance (and often all three) care should be taken. If you haven't read Liguori and Sullivan's American Birding Association article about adult harriers that retain brown plumage and the intricacies of their molt then you should, it's quite an eye opener. (PDF online here). Jerry also posted a brief but excellent post a while back on his blog about being careful with using coloration when it comes to separating brown female and juvenile birds at a distance. (Blog post here).

Northen Harrier - Rick Bacher

Personally I have found Northern Harriers, though in many ways highly distinctive, one of those birds that seems to be surprisingly difficult for even intermediate level birders to initially identify at the watch. The obvious reason for this is the disparity in flight style between the way we generally see them coursing low over fields and marshes to the way they look flapping in direct flight or soaring within a kettle of migrant raptors. If you are interested in seriously improving your skills picking out those migrant harriers, or want to get better at aging or sexing them then come join HMANA for it's week long Raptor ID Workshop in 2015. To find out more about that event and to read the report from the incredible 2014 Workshop visit our website (link here).

So keep 'em peeled for Northern Harriers, it will be interesting to see what this season brings.

Northern Harrier - Sue Barth

Talking of keeping your eyes peeled, if you live in the Northeast perhaps this Fall is the Fall to bring yourself hero status at your local hawkwatch: by spotting a migrant Zone-tailed Hawk. After an exciting initial sighting this spring of a extremely out of range Zone-tailed Hawk out on Martha's Vinyard, MA (here), there were further sightings in both Nova Scotia on June 1st (photos here) and in Halifax, Massachusetts in July (photos here). They have to go somewhere right? If you don't fancy your chances and want better odds of seeing Zone-tailed Hawks in North America you might want to keep an eye on HMANA's soon-to-be-announced tour offerings to Texas and Arizona (here).

Northern Harrier - © Dominic Mitchell (www.birdingetc.com)

On behalf of HMANA I hope all our supporters, members and readers have an enjoyable and productive Fall season. Thanks to all of my friends who generously donated their photographs for this blog post. The harriers pictured come from Cape May, New Jersey to Vancouver, British Columbia and most points between. It's these birds that unite us - let's get together and enjoy them for the next few months!

Raptor Bytes - hawkwatching morsels from around the web

Hawkcount - HMANA

HMANA New Web Presence
As the fall season starts to draw to a close, I am hoping that readers have noticed some recent changes both to our redesigned and relaunched website (here) and some spiffy new updates to our Hawkcount page (if you missed it see the blog post here). All of this has been undertaken thanks to the support of our membership and the hard work of our mainly volunteer team. In the recent HMANA Hawk Migration Studies Magazine we pledged to have a much more active online presence (it is 2013 after all) and the new website will offer part of this.

HMANA 'News'
With the Fall counting season drawing to a close, it can only mean that it is just a few months until the Spring season is upon us. Until then there will be plenty on our website and blog to keep you entertained! As well as the blog, important news pieces concerning HMANA can be found in the 'HMANA News' section on the website. For example, usually the seasons flyway reports are only open to the membership of the organization, but last fall's editions are now up on our website for your perusal (link here). To read the reports click on the icon with the small white arrow in a black box at the top right of the document. You can also download this PDF. For an organization that is focused on conservation it feels right to be putting more of this information online. Reports will at future date be moved to a members only section of the website.

HMANA Conference
In other news our 40th Anniversary Conference is really starting to take shape now (Braddock Bay, near Rochester, NY April 25-27 2014) and we are excited to confirm that a certain British author with a recently published guide to raptor identification will be our keynote speaker at the event.! Keep an eye on exciting event developments here.

California Condors: Good news, bad news
In 1982 only 22 California Condors remained in the wild, however through successful captive breeding programs their numbers have grown steadily. The recovery of this species is still on a knife edge though, with their main threat coming from continuing lead poisoning. For those that care about condors it can only be seen as a good thing that the State of California has recently extended the ban on the use of lead based ammunition statewide. It hasn't all been good news however, with two condors being lost in accidents in Kern County, CA recently (story here). This news followed hot on the heels that October has seen significantly larger numbers of birds than normal having to be treated for lead poisoning at the Los Angeles Zoo (more on the story from the L.A Times here).

California Condor Cam
For those that love raptors then a must see is the Oakland Zoo and Ventana Wildlife Society run Condorcam. As well as the condors the odd Golden Eagle drops in to grab some food as well as the ubiquitous Ravens. Very, very cool (check it out here).

California Condor movie 
Some of you might be aware of the above movie The Condor's Shadow. It has just been announced that it will air on PBS SoCal on Dec 7th at 8pm. Looks to be an interesting movie. You can find out more about the movie, view extra footage and find out more about future screenings on Facebook (here).

New HawkCount feature now online!

Have you seen HawkCount lately?

Now, when you visit http://hawkcount.org you can immediately see all the hawkwatches and the total hawks seen there for each day of the past week.  Daily totals are listed for each site reporting that day, and you can then click on any site’s name to open and view its  full daily report and the hourly totals. The daily lists for the current day (and for the previous day) automatically update every couple of minutes, so you don't need to reload the page to see listings of new reports as they come in.

The new tabular listing only displays the last week’s totals, but all of a site’s information is always available at that site’s page in HawkCount.  Just click on Find a Hawkwatch to locate individual sites or select Monthly or Daily data summaries and then choose the hawkwatch you wish to view from the dropdown list.

For the first time you can now quickly glance through all reporting sites for a given day and see the total number of hawks seen in one spot.  Check it out!

Okay Folks, let's keep it CLEAN!!

Okay.  You’ve just spent a substantial chunk of your life scouring the skies for birds, taking careful systematic counts of everything you see.  (For some of you, we’re talking hundreds of hours spent in one place!)  The daily forms for each count day are in your possession, the data is submitted to HawkCount, and all the original paperwork is filed away for safekeeping.  Mission accomplished!  But wait!  Just how “clean” is your data?

Most veteran hawkwatchers I know pride themselves on the quality of their fieldwork.  They’ve developed their ID skills after years of practice, and putting a name with reliable ease to most every raptor they see is something they have every right to be proud of.  But at the end of the day, what happens to all those paper forms with the tiny boxes of numbers they’ve scrawled all over them?  Does your hawkwatch have a procedure for handling data?  If it doesn’t, I implore you think seriously whether it might need one.

I raise this issue now as the end of spring hawkwatching season draws near, because I’ll admit I’m easily impressed by the large stack of count sheets presently on my desk.  After all, I worked hard to collect nearly all of that data, and I try very hard to be a careful/conscientious counter.  But an integral part of the job of counting hawks is to see that the data collected can actually be used, and for this to happen, it must be correct!  And for it to be correct, it must be checked through thoroughly, line by line, to see that the paper forms are faithfully transcribed electronically to HawkCount.  So these count sheets on my desk are not yet a finished product, despite appearances to the contrary.  I’ll admit that this is possibly the least glamorous aspect of counting hawks I can imagine, but it’s of paramount importance to the science side of it.  And I think it’s much too easy, especially in this age of nearly realtime HawkCount posting, to come back at the end of the day and quickly bang out the day’s results for all your eager fans waiting to see them and be done with it.  But after spending a full day on the hill, you’re probably tired.  You can barely see straight!  And now you’re going to take aim with your mouse and cursor at more little boxes on your computer screen and expect perfection.  This is unrealistic.  I don’t care who you are, you’re going to make mistakes!  And this, too, is part of the job of counting hawks.

So I’d like to make a special request of you: if you don’t already, make a point to take as much pride in the correctness of your data as you do in your skills at identifying birds.  Whether you audit the data yourself at a later time or designate someone willing (and able) to do it, just ensure that it gets done.  And if you must do it yourself, try to approach it with fresh eyes rather than a mind clouded by fatigue, which is why it’s almost always a bad idea to try to audit the data yourself the very day it was collected.

My personal ritual is to export the submitted data from HawkCount as an MS Excel worksheet (ask your site coordinator to do this for you if you don’t have direct access to your HawkCount profile), and then I’ll tote my laptop with me down to a coffee shop that offers free wireless internet.  In the midst of a caffeinated buzz while wearing headphones to cloud out the surrounding din, I’ll step through the spreadsheet on the computer cell-by-cell while tracing through the stack of daily forms sitting before me with an index finger.  (I imagine it might be entertaining to watch me work!)  My preference for coffee shops with WiFi is twofold: a) it’s perfectly acceptable in many coffee shops (e.g., Starbucks) for one person to spread out his paperwork and things all over a table for several hours at a time and only order a few soy Café au laits, and b) having internet access means I can correct errors on HawkCount as I discover them, and also allows me to take breaks and screw off a little when my eyes begin to glaze over.  Admittedly, coffee houses are not cheap in an absolute sense.  But we’re not talking about making them a daily habit.  We’re talking about spending $10 on your pleasure as an *investment* in the quality of your count data, and this begins to look especially cheap given the amount of time you’ve already invested in counting birds.  (And if coffee is not your thing, do what you can to make the job slightly more pleasurable/rewarding if you find the task as monotonous as I do.)

So getting back on track: accurate counts are at the core of what we do.  Do what you possibly can to make sure they really count!

Good Hawkwatching,
Arthur

It's Time for RAPTORTHON!

Spring has sprung, and it is time for another HMANA Raptorthon! Now in its third year, this fundraiser is fun and entertaining way to raise money and awareness for raptors and hawkwatching across North America. Some teams have already signed up and picked their dates for their big day. Consider forming a team of your own to support your local hawkwatch and HMANA.

This year my team, Braddock Bay Raptor Research (BBRR), will hold its Raptorthon on May 12, which falls during the latter part of the spring raptor migration. For the third spring in a row, we will attempt to count the most raptor species we can from the Braddock Bay hawkwatch, located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Last year BBRR earned the accomplishment of having counted the most raptor species out of all the teams that participated, and we hope to do it again! We were proud to have doubled our funds raised last year, and we were able to use the money to help build a new display board for our hawkwatch platform. This year our goal is to raise enough money to cover a sponsorship for our Hawkcount.org page, and to help cover our housing costs for our hawkwatcher.

Because the month of May is a great time to see Bald Eagles ring migration at Braddock Bay, this year’s Raptorthon event has taken on an eagle theme. BBRR will be holding several eagle related programs and activities for this “Eagle Day” including observation time with a live bald eagle named Liberty, who is an educational ambassador from the Institute for Environmental Learning in Hilton, NY. There will also be eagle crafts and activities for our younger visitors. Of course there will be hawkwatching, and there will also be a chance for people to “adopt” hawks that are banded at our raptor banding station.

There are many ways to conduct a Raptorthon, and you don’t need to be an experienced hawkwatcher or even have a favorite hawkwatch to do so. BBRR takes advantage of the fact that we conduct a spring hawk count and can utilize the beautiful Braddock Bay Park which is easily accessible to participants. Our goal is not only to raise much needed funds for our site and HMANA, but to also reach out to the community and share the enjoyment and importance of hawkwatching as a whole. A great thing about doing a Raptorthon is that you can create one to suit your needs. Visit HMANA’s website at http://hmana.org for Raptorthon ideas, or to make a pledge to support the team of your choice.

Daena Ford

Co-Director, Braddock Bay Raptor Research

Membership Secretary, Hawk Migration Association of North America

Hawkwatching As Meditation

I’m occasionally reminded how unusual hawkwatching really is as a subculture of the birding world, to say nothing of society itself. Many of you probably find it as difficult as I do to fully explain to the uninitiated your compulsion to spend so much time in a single spot, looking for birds. As a counter, I hear it all too often, “Don’t you get bored up here?” But I don’t. This is not to say I don’t experience more than my fair share of boredom, especially on slow, hot, windless days where the world almost seems in stasis apart from the sun creeping a slow arc across the sky. (Or slow, cold days, for that matter!) But to say I am bored, generally speaking, even when firmly mired in a string of slow bird days, would be completely incorrect. Put simply, the questioner assumes motivations on my part that would not be sustainable in the long-term if they were my only reasons for going out to watch hawks. It’s not just hope for strong flights or rare species that keeps me coming back up the hill each day, because I’d probably spend many of my days there disappointed if that were so. Instead, I rarely ever feel more keenly alive, if you will, as when I’m out hawkwatching. And one of the reasons why is because hawkwatching, for me, is as much about a certain reverence for the passage of time seen most obviously in the change of the seasons. To stand in a single location for so long is to witness Magic, firsthand; a single location can exhibit an astonishing spectrum of personality throughout the year, one that is usually missed unless one is willing to stand there, receptively, and become part of what you see. The confluence of birds, foliage, and cloudform can be intoxicating! And I think anyone with loyalty to a particular hawkwatch, even one that might not command mind-blowing end-of-season figures most years, probably knows, at least subconsciously, what I speak of.

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!