HMANA 2012 Fall Conference - "Counting for the Future"

The Hawk Migration Association of North America is excited to present its 2012 Conference “Counting for the Future” hosted by The National Audubon Society at the Audubon Center in Greenwich, Connecticut.  The conference will be held on October 13 and 14, during peak migration season at one of New England’s oldest Hawk Watch sites, Quaker Ridge. 

To sustain and advance raptor conservation, “Counting for the Future” will seek to actively engage participants in bird conservation efforts, with a strong emphasis on educating the next generation of hawk watchers.  The conference will feature an array of scientific presentations, panel discussions, raptor identification workshops, and field trips to local hawk watch sites and birding hotspots.

Registration is open to all raptor enthusiasts!  Conference activities will begin at 8:00AM Saturday, October 13th and continue throughout the day. A social event on Saturday evening will be held prior to our keynote address. Activities will continue throughout the day on Sunday, October 14^th, and will wrap up at 5:00PM.

The conference will feature keynote speaker Peter Dunne, noted author, bird conservationist, Chief Communications Officer for New Jersey Audubon, and the Director of Cape May Bird Observatory. Sponsored by Swarovski Optik, Mr. Dunne will look back on his amazing career and highlight, in his keynote address “Islands in the Cloud Stream:  A Reflection on 36 Years of Hawk Watching,” the events and people that profoundly influenced his work.

A full program schedule will be available soon.  A handful of conference activities are listed below.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS:

• Raptor Population Index Project Update – New North American Population Trend Results. Presented by Julie Brown, HMANA Monitoring Site Coordinator
• Osprey Satellite Tracking.  Presented by Dr. Robert Bierregaard, University of North Carolina
• Raptor Photography – A Seasonal Approach.  Presented by Steven Sachs
• Red-tailed Hawk Natal Dispersal at Braddock Bay.  Presented by Daena Ford
• Golden Eagle Satellite Tracking.  Presented by Mike Lanzone
• Bald Eagle Restoration in NY State. Presented by Mike Allen, retired Wildlife Technician from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation
• Raptor Education: Everybody’s Doing It.  Presented by Rodney Olsen, Special Education Teacher from Addison Central Schools in Vermont
• Using Raptor Nestcams for Educational Outreach.  Presented by Laura Erickson, educator & author
• Raptor Education Panel Discussion 

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

• Digi-scoping and optics demonstrations by Swarovski Optik
• Hawkwatching on site at Quaker Ridge Hawkwatch
• Hawk Identification Workshops for all skill levels
• Early morning bird walks on the grounds of Greenwich Audubon
• Live Raptors from the Sharon Audubon Center

FIELD TRIPS

Saturday, October 13 - Chestnut Ridge Hawkwatch, New York

Located in the southern foothills of the Taconic Mountains this hawkwatch sits at the highest point in The Nature Conservancy’s Arthur W. Butler Sanctuary, Bedford Hills, NY.  Chestnut Ridge has been operated by the Bedford Audubon Society for over 30 years. Season totals average 10,000 to 15,000 raptors of 16 species.  Just last year, counters tallied 9,655 Broad-winged hawks in a single day, which is more than a typical season’s count! 

Sunday, October 14 - Lighthouse Point, Connecticut

Located at Lighthouse Point Park, in New Haven along the Long Island Sound.  This hawkwatch is a coastal plain site which receives impressive numbers of falcons and accipiter in the fall season. 

Visit the HMANA Conference webpage for registration information.  Hope to see you there!  

Look at the Hawk Watchers, Too! Not Just the Hawks.

October 29 I was hawk watching at Lighthouse Point, in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the best hawk watch sites in New England. The day was not what I had expected; the winds were far weaker than forecast and the count was only a little over 100 by early afternoon, but with a good mix, highlighted by a Peregrine perched for an hour and an immature Bald Eagle that spent some time soaring over us, trying to determine what it wanted to do.

Activity was slowing in the early afternoon, when I believe Lynn James said she had a large hawk out front. Lynn, who has incredible distance vision, said the bird was in a large gray cloud above a blue slit in heavy cloud cover. Everyone scanned for the bird and gradually we found it. People remained glued to their scopes as the bird was way out and still quite small, but acting like a very large bird. Someone had earlier remarked that the site had not had a Golden Eagle yet this season, so it was about time, though it was clearly not typical “Golden” weather.

I got on the bird fairly quickly and soon felt very good about it. It had a Red-tailed Hawk kind of dihedral, visible at great distance. The bird was quite large but gliding straight toward us without apparently moving a muscle or a wing, so we couldn’t pick up any contrast on it, much less a head/tail ratio. I think everyone was thinking “golden,” but just could not see enough to call it. As the bird angled slightly, I was able to see a bright white basal third of the long tail and the smaller head. I shouted Golden, and everyone began cheering and concurring. The excitement was palpable as the bird continued to glide towards us.

I had been hunched over my scope straining to watch this bird. When I stood up to relax for a second, I noticed that half the scopes were pointing north and half east. I shouted there must be two goldens, that half the people were looking at a different bird than I had been. Everyone looked up, and then over, and sure enough, half of us had found one golden eagle and half another. The northerly bird slowly glided over, revealing a lot of white in the flight feathers, a long rectangular white patch in each wing. My golden, following a few minutes later, had a lot less white in the wings. Strangely, after not having had a golden for two months, two occurred at the same time, They were followed by a third golden just a few minutes later, a bird with very little white in the wings or tail. It was a terrific fifteen minutes, but we all had to laugh. If one of us had not looked briefly at the hawk watchers instead of the hawks, would we have ever noticed there were TWO Golden Eagles?

Golden Eagle photograph by Joseph Kennedy. Used with permission. (Not one of the "Lighthouse" birds.)

Pepperspecks and the Visibility of Hawks

It was a mezzo mezzo Broad-winged Hawk migration at Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, Massachusetts, this fall. The numbers were less than half our long-term average and about three quarters of the average for the past ten years.

Compounding the disappointment, many of the broadwings were pepperspecks, so high in the sky that some people thought we were counting floaters in our eyes. How high were these pepperspecks? In Flight Strategies of Migrating Hawks (1989) Paul Kerlinger says that at Cape May, NJ, broadwings were difficult to see with the naked eye when 625 meters, or roughly 2000 feet, directly overhead against a cloudless sky. Broadwings were generally seen with the naked eye below 550 m (1800 ft) but somewhat difficult to see beyond that. When using 7X binoculars, single broadwings directly overhead were difficult to detect at 1,100 m (3600 ft). Kerlinger notes that in Texas flocks of hundreds of broadwings observed on radar could be missed by observers with binoculars when the hawks were flying less than 1600 ft above ground level about a mile from the observers.

Today I was hawk watching at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, Connecticut, one of my favorite sites for looking at accipiters and falcons. It is a great site to see and compare Sharp-shinned Hawks with Cooper’s Hawks, and today I was trying to photograph them, with limited success. I was in a parking lot between two small woodlots, somewhat sheltered from a 10-13 mph northwest wind gusting to 22 mph. Early on, the birds were low, often just above treetop levels, but they gradually worked their way up in late morning to the limits of unaided vision.

Occasionally, they would stack up, soaring and hanging into the wind. One time, I had 8 Sharp-shinned Hawks stacked up in a single column from the treetops to the limits of unaided vision. It looked like the skies over Kennedy airport early on a Monday morning, but these air travelers weren’t looking to land. They were trying to decide if they wanted to fly 5-7 miles over the bay in that wind, or circumnavigate the bay. Kerlinger says that sharpies become difficult to see against cloudless skies between 400-500 meters (1300-1600 ft.) overhead and disappeared above 700 m. (2300 ft).

Later in the day when I had given up all hope of photography because of the birds’ altitude, one of the excellent observers at Lighthouse would find a sharpshin or kestrel flying at the limits of naked vision. When one bird was found, we would often find another half dozen birds in the immediate area, once our eyes could focus on something. On one occasion I found a Peregrine rowing across the sky almost directly overhead, beyond unaided vision and approaching the limits of binocular vision. While directing other observers to the Peregrine, I discovered two more following in an almost direct line at the same altitude, which suggests these broadwing-sized birds were probably around 3600 ft. high.

A number of factors that I have not addressed affect the visibility of hawks. Several books and articles published in the '80s addressed the issue to an extent, but I’ve not seen much done “recently.” Is anyone aware of “visibility studies” done at a hawk watch near them?