Letting the Day Come to You

There are a host of reasons for spending a day or many days at a hawk watch. Many of those are readily perceived and understood: the excitement of thousands of Broad-winged Hawks in the sky at one time, a good look at a migrating Golden Eagle and the first Osprey of the season.

Underlying these fairly accessible pleasures are some other, perhaps more profound but usually subliminal reasons for what we do. One of these has to do, I think, with simply letting the day come to you.

In a way that's almost oriental and meditative, hawk watching entails patience and a willingness to allow the passage of time and the movements of a discrete day to unfold without aggressively trying to influence what happens in it. This letting go while still paying close attention to temperature, wind direction, cloud cover, visibility and other movements of the day returns to us a connectedness to the natural world that's rare in most of our lives. I think it's this feeling of connectedness, in this way and others, that calls us to the hawk watch, even when the wind is in the east and the hawks are spread out and few.

Monarch Butterfly numbers at historic low numbers

Most hawkwatch sites that see them count Monarch butterflies, and this year reporting those numbers may be more important than ever. Monarch Watch reports that flooding, resulting landslides and cold weather at the butterfly’s wintering grounds in Mexico have reduced the already small wintering population by as much as 50%. The 2009-2010 over-wintering season began with the lowest number of butterflies seen in the past 16 years, Dr. Lincoln Brower reported in the current issue of the  organization’s weekly spring newsletter, Monarch Butterfly Journey North.

The organization also reports that the 12 Texas observations of migrating monarchs for the current week are well below the nearly 70 sightings reported last year during the same week. The newsletter Journey North reports weekly on the progress of the monarch migration. Sightings of northward-bound monarchs may be reported directly to the organization on the site's Maps and Journal page.

HawkCount and Local Hawk Watches

I’m blissfully sunburned after about as beautiful a day as you can possibly get on the south shore of Lake Erie in March. We saw nice runs of Red-shouldered Hawks and Red-tailed Hawks, with a few great looks at Bald Eagles and other raptors thrown in for good measure.

As the Ripley Hawk Watch’s official counter, I’ve just completed entering our data for March 18th in http://www.hawkcount.org/. We only had six people at the watch today, but I know we have dozens, maybe hundreds, that follow our days by going to HawkCount on the internet.

If you haven’t visited HawkCount recently, go there and look at the expanded site profiles affiliates have developed with the help of HMANA staff. Notice also the expanded species information for reporting sites: HawkCount now includes graphic representation of migration peaks and duration for recorded species at each raptor watch.

I especially appreciate the way HawkCount presents polished and professional reports based on the data we enter daily. These reports reinforce the local message we try to get out that our monitoring of the migration is an important conservation activity, is disciplined, and constitutes a significant contribution to scientific knowledge about important resources.

If you aren’t already a regular user of HawkCount, check it out!

How about those eagles?

Finally! The central and east coast weather systems have cleared, and the first decent flights of migrating hawks weren’t far behind. March 16 and 17 were the first good days for many spring hawkwatches.

West Skyline in Duluth counted (please sit down first) an amazing 679 bald eagles on March 16. Counter Karl Bardon reported the flight was very compacted with hourly counts of 218 from 12-1300 and 247 from 13-1400. Kettles of 30-40 eagles were reported. To make that sweet story even sweeter, their count of 30 Golden Eagles isthe  highest spring count for the site to date.

Red-tailed hawks generally posted good numbers elsewhere, with bald eagles also putting in a good show in a few other places. Derby Hill in New York found 156 Red-tails on March 17, and nearby Braddock Bay posted 100 on the 16th. The days were also good ones for variety at these New York Sites.

Even the sites that didn’t find great numbers of birds weren’t complaining about the weather.

Join HMANA in Costa Rica for a Birding and Raptor Migration Tour

October 15-24, 2010

Witnessing the migration of hundreds of thousands of raptors overhead is exhilarating. It is a phenomenon that every birder should witness at least once in their life. Join HMANA for an exciting 10 day tour through Costa Rica in mid October, as we explore a wide diversity of habitat types and the large-scale migration of Neo-tropical raptors.

HMANA’s 10-day trip will explore a variety of the country’s diverse ecosystems including the Caribbean coastal & Pacific lowland rain forests, the Central highlands and a volcano, mangrove swamps, and the dry forest. A central part of the trip will be two full days visiting the Kèköldi Hawk Watch, one of the greatest raptor migration hotspots in the world. The Migratory Raptor Conservation and Monitoring Program at Kèköldi regularly count 2 to 3 million raptors of 20+ different species each fall. It is not uncommon to observe over 200,000 raptors migrating on a mid-October day! Given the watchsite location, high in a canopy tower overlooking the Caribbean, it is an ideal spot to watch the large-scale passerine and waterbird migration, not to mention the rich local bird diversity.

Other highlights of this trip include observing up to 300 species of birds, numerous reptiles, including crocodiles, and diverse plant life. This tour includes eight full and active days of birding and sightseeing with moderate drives between locations. Several days in each eco-region will allow us a relaxed pace to absorb some of the rich culture and easy-going Costa Rican lifestyle that typifies this country’s unique charm.

Join us for this once in a lifetime experience!

For all tour information and pricing, please visit: www.hmana.org/Costa_Rica/ Or contact Julie Tilden at tilden@hmana.org, (781) 264-0778.

2010 Spring Hawkwatching Season Begins!

Wildcat Ridge in New Jersey was the first hawkwatch to officially open the spring 2010 hawkwatching season.  Counter Fred Vanderburgh spent four hours on the lookout on February 15.  He didn't see any migrating hawks but saw 2  local Red-tailed Hawks, "a few TV's" and noted 5 visitors in his report to HawkCount.

Three days later on February 18, Fort Smallwood Park in Maryland became the first hawkwatch to post migrants when counter Sue Ricciardi saw two Turkey Vultures in 3.25 hours at her site.  The next day Sue counted 13 migrants--11 Turkey Vultures, a Bald Eagle and a Northern Harrier.

Not to be outdone, Second Mountain in Pennsylvania counted 53 migrants on February 20.  The breakdown was 27 Turkey Vultures, 23 Black Vultures and 3 Red-Tailed Hawks in three hours of counting by Morris Cox. The next day the site also counted a sub-adult Golden Eagle and a Red-shouldered Hawk, among more vultures.

To date, no other sites have joined these three, but it's obviously time to ready the gear for spring hawkwatching!

Celebrate Spring Migration with HMANA's Raptorthon Event

It certainly doesn’t look like spring outside my window and its hard to beleive that spring migration is right around the corner. As raptors prepare to head north, HMANA prepares for our first Spring Raptorthon! Last fall, raptor enthusiasts from across the country helped us launch our first ever Fall Raptorthon event and raised funds that directly supported raptor monitoring programs at HMANA and participating watch sites.
Now we are gearing to celebrate spring raptor migration across the country and we want you to join us. It’s easy and fun.

Still wondering how Raptorthon works? Like Birdathon, Raptorthon is a sponsored Bird Count, but is focused on raptors.
Here’s how it works….

Choose your count options and make it fun. It’s up to you!

(1) Choose any day(s) from 1 March to 15 May. Choose where you’d like to count; your local watch site, your backyard? You may count as an individual or as part of a team. Decide what you would like to count (the number of species you see? all individual raptors? only merlins?)

(2) Register with HMANA (either by mail or online). Assign a percentage of your proceeds to a watch site or other conservation organization. Receive a free Raptorthon t-shirt for you and your teammates when you register!

(3) Find sponsors to pledge support for your Raptorthon, either with a flat rate, for each raptor species you identify, or for your count per species (e.g. $5/bald eagle).

(4) Do your Raptorthon and enjoy yourself!

(5) Report to your sponsors and collect your pledges.

(6) Send pledge money to HMANA.

(7) HMANA will issue receipts to sponsors and distribute the money you assigned to a watchsite or conservation organization.

(8) All results will be presented in HMANA’s Hawk Migration Studies journal.

Why should you participate in HMANA’s Spring Raptorthon?

• It’s fun and will raise awareness of raptors and hawk watching everywhere!
• Do you use HawkCount.org, HMANA’s on-line hawkwatch information system and data archive? Raptorthon dollars will help to support and improve HawkCount.org, as well as the Raptor Population Index and other HMANA services for hawk watchers, including the HMANA Blog and e-newsletter.
• Dollars raised can help support your local hawkwatch or another non-profit of your choice.
• Your Raptorthon results will be posted in HMANA’s Hawk Migration Studies journal and on the web to compare across the continent.
• Your local watch site could see more golden eagles, merlins, etc., in your Raptorthon than any other watch site.

All Spring Raptorthon forms are available at www.hmana.org/raptorthon. If you would like hard copies of the forms and instructions, or if you have any questions, please contact Julie Tilden at tilden@hmana.org or (781) 264-0778.