The Annual Hawk Watch

Todd Watts is in charge of the Hawk Watch on Greenlaw Mountain in Charlotte County, NB Canada.  Here he is scanning the ridges and hills for migrating hawks.  550 hawks, primarily Broad-winged Hawks came by on this day. 

A little over a dozen birders made the trek up the mountain to help put eyes in the sky and pick out the migrating hawks.

It's Hawk watch season once again and the students at Three Sisters School are in for a treat this week. Every fall, several million hawks leave their northern breeding grounds and move south, many to South America. As soon as this migration begins, an army of scientists, Ornithologists, birders and other interested people assemble at locations along the migratory pathways, to observe, identify, and count the numbers of birds as they migrate south. Hawk watching was established to conserve our environment through education, long-term monitoring, and scientific research on raptors as indicators of ecosystem health. You will be going to Greenridge, the hawk watch location in central Oregon. My friend Mr Kimdel Owen and possibly a couple other of our birding friends will be accompanying you and they will have a wealth of information to tell you about how to watch and identify hawks and why it is so important to continue to monitor them.

Sharp-shined Hawk

Broad-winged Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

I am lucky to be really close to a hawk watch location while visiting my sister here in New Brunswick, Canada.   Migrating hawks are looking for places where the air temperature provides air currents called thermals that allow them to get easy lift and gain altitude so they can cruise for hours following the ridges of mountains and the coast line of the oceans. Most hawk watch sites are on an elevated position usually at the front of a ridge so birds traveling up the valleys can be observed as they seek the ridge to get best advantage of the thermal air currents. The location here is on Greenlaw Mountain with a great view of the St Croix River and the hills and ridges of the province of New Brunswick. The day I was up there we saw about 550 birds of Prey and this is the list of birds that came by

Broad-winged Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Sharp-shined Hawk

Merlin

American Kestrel

Bald Eagle

Northern Harrier

Osprey

Turkey Vulture

Most hawk watch locations have a garden owl sculpture erected on a pole to draw in the occasional hawk.  Hawks view owls as the enemy and will aggressively attack them if they see them.  This Sharp-shined Hawk just took a dive at the "bait"

Have a great hawk watch on Thursday and I will be interested in seeing what your list will be from Greenridge

Here is the Big Year list update:

131 American Black Duck, St Andrews, NB, Canada

132 Green-winged Teal, St Andrews, NB, Canada

133 Common Eider, St Andrews, NB, Canada

134 Wimbrel, St Andrews, NB, Canada – this was a fun bird because it was the first one my brother-in-law has seen in this county having lived here twenty years.

135 Herring Gull, St Andrews, NB, Canada

136 Greater Black-backed Gull, St Andrews, NB, Canada

137 Northern Parula, St Andrews, NB, Canada

138 Black-throated Green Warbler, St Andrews, NB, Canada

139 Purple Finch, St Andrews, NB, Canada

Wimbrel, found in St Andrews NB, Canada.  My brother-in-law, a birder, has lived in this town for 20 years and this was his first Wimbrel in the county. 

and a couple of stragglers that I forgot to put on the list previously.

140 Warbling Vireo, Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, Ohio

141 Marsh Wren, Sumerset County, Maine