Keweenaw Raptor Survey

Rather than expound at length, today I’ll simply offer a sample (culled from the day’s HawkCount post) of what is to come this week.  I hope you’re gearing up.  The big BW push will almost certainly come before the end of the week.  Oh, and we had another Swainson’s Hawk on Saturday while I was away conducting a count at Rocky Ridge as part of Joseph Youngman’s Raptornet, which I’ll discuss briefly in my next post.

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Brockway Mountain
Copper Harbor, Michigan, USA
Daily Raptor Counts: Apr 29, 2012
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Species            Day's Count    Month Total   Season Total
------------------ ----------- -------------- --------------
Turkey Vulture               2            172            174
Osprey                       1             14             14
Bald Eagle                  13            190            835
Northern Harrier             4             85            100
Sharp-shinned Hawk          46            406            445
Cooper's Hawk                0              2              2
Northern Goshawk             0             13             14
Red-shouldered Hawk          0              5             17
Broad-winged Hawk          608            783            783
Swainson's Hawk              0              2              2
Red-tailed Hawk             38            350            456
Rough-legged Hawk           10             91            154
Golden Eagle                 1             13             26
American Kestrel             1             33             42
Merlin                       0              3              5
Peregrine Falcon             0              4              4
Unknown Accipiter            0              2              2
Unknown Buteo                0              2              7
Unknown Falcon               0              0              0
Unknown Eagle                0              2             14
Unknown Raptor               0              9             11

Total:                     724           2181           3107
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Observation start time: 08:00:00 
Observation end   time: 16:00:00 
Total observation time: 8 hours

Official Counter:        Arthur Green

Observers:        

Visitors:
213, including Debb Potts, Judy Beuter, Karen Karl, Tim Frick, Pamela &
Robert Yerks.  (Is it me, or this mountain just busier this year?)

Weather:
Temp 44-55F.  BP 30.25 inHg, with diminuendo!  Very Light to Moderate
variable breezes all day; the wind was decisively indecisive today.  Good
visibility w/mild to moderate haze & mild heat "shimmer."  Partly cloudy,
becoming progressively overcast by mid afternoon; light Cirrostratus around
my periphery thickened and began enveloping the sky w/small patches of
Altocumulus evident after midday.

Raptor Observations:
We're now clearly entering our peak period for Broad-winged Hawk.  By in
large, the day's flight moved at good height over Brockway & the valley
between Rocky Ridge.  Some BW kettles, however, were spotted N moving over
the lake, and some westbound kettles were observed moving well beyond Rocky
Ridge to my S.  Interesting counterpoint to the day's eastbound count of 608
BWs were the 563 BWs moving westbound, most of them observed somewhere
over/beyond Lake Medora.  Whether these westbound birds are indeed the same
as the ones I counted earlier moving overhead moving eastbound is something
I can only speculate about.

Non-raptor Observations:
39 Common Loon, 37 Sandhill Crane, 2 Tree Swallow, 3 Yellow-rumped Warbler,
4 Horned Lark.

Predictions:
Rain, but a fair chance that the weather will clear and flights will resume
in force.
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Periodically, I’m asked to recommend some books that serve as a functional entryway into the worlds of raptor and cloud identification.  So long as you fully realize that studying is no substitute for time spent in the field and actually practicing your newly discovered skills, I can help here.

The  Good Book for hawkwatching in North America has long been Hawks In Flight (Dunne, et al.).  Relying primarily on black & white drawings with only a sparse section of photographs in the back of the book, it would be a mistake to dismiss this book as quaint.  It imparts the fundamental approach/philosophy to identifying raptors at distance better than any other book out there, with the possible exception of its European cousin, Flight Identification of European Raptors (Porter, et al.), from which HIF is descended in concept and execution.  HIF is inexpensive, and will not be a difficult read for you if it is taken in chunks rather than digested whole in only a few sittings.

Another book you’ll want is Hawks From Every Angle (Liguori 2005), an indispensable photographic reference that complements HIF.  Reading sections as the need arises might be the best approach here, as the book was probably intended more as a reference than a guide for the newcomer.  Without context (i.e., the actual bird), it may be difficult to interpret text like “intermediate birds can display a variable amount of white mottling on the chest“.  So work through the book to get a general view of each bird without getting bogged down in the details, and then selectively pick at sections in detail.  Interestingly, this book is one of the few to note Brockway Mountain as a significant spring watchsite several years before the KRS project was launched.  (And, indeed, some of the photographs selected for inclusion in the book were actually taken here!)  In any case, the book will wear well as you become a more experienced hawkwatcher.

Two other books which, while not strictly oriented to hawks, will also do much to train your eye and encourage your appreciation of the migration spectacle.  They are both easy reads.  The first, Sibley’s Birding Basics (Sibley 2002) is a stellar introduction for those new to watching birds.  Even if you stick to just watching hawks at Brockway, this book will prepare a useful framework you can build on while on the mountain.  The second, How Birds Migrate (Kerlinger 2009), will help put avian migration in context of a bird’s life history and our ecology, and uses actual examples to illustrate the flight strategies employed by different species of birds during migration.

And, finally, I would be remiss if I glossed over the conservation story of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary as told by HMS’s first curator, Maurice Broun in Hawks Aloft (Broun 1948)  This book, as one reviewer said, is magic!  And its story remains remarkably relevant today.  The story of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary should be known to every hawkwatcher.

Shortly, I’ll post about some of my favorite cloudspotting books, as cloud identification has become an indelible aspect of my hawkwatching experience.  In the meantime, I hope you’re continuing to follow us on HawkCount!  While the next few days promise sparse to moderate flights, I suspect we’ll have a lot of eager birdies in the pipeline as soon as conditions change.

Good Hawkwatching,
Arthur

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Technical issues on my end continue, but there’s hope this will be resolved soon.  In the days ahead, I’ll begin posting shorter entries on a more regular basis to stay abreast of the quickening pace of migration.

An icy reception. (April 17)

We’re approaching the peak for both Broad-winged Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk, recording our first of the former on Friday (April 21), with a continuing trickle that’s going to become heavy as step into the closing days of April.  This is one of the most exciting times of year to be hawkwatching at Brockway, so I hope you’ll be watching the wind forecasts in the days ahead.  Those magic S/SE winds are the ones to watch for!

For your amusement, I threw together a quick graph showing the three largest dates of goosie movement since the beginning of the count.  In all (as of April 23), 13759 Canada Goose moved in this first wave.  Golf lovers everywhere are probably mortified!

The First Wave.

New sightings on this past week include Lapland Longspur, Eastern Phoebe, Rusty Blackbird (April 17), Killdeer (April 18),  Tree Swallow (April 20), American Tree Sparrow, White-breasted Nuthatch (April 23).

Also notable was the adult dark morph Swainson’s Hawk that passed casually with an adultRed-tailed Hawk on April 22.  They are a rare but reliable fixture at Brockway; while we see only a handful each spring, it’s nice to have that occasional glimpse of a species you wouldn’t typically expect this far east.

Enough people have been asking me to recommend my favorite books for raptor and cloud identification, so tomorrow I will address that.  As always, thank you for reading!

Watching the world turn green from atop Brockway,
Arthur

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Barring Monday’s (April 2) flight, raptor migration proceeds at a modest pace since my last post.  We’ve seen a couple days of the densest fog/Stratus you’re likely to see anywhere.  (For those who’ve asked, the fundamental difference between fog and Stratus cloud is that fog touches ground level, where Stratus does not.)  And we’ve had a few days where the thick Stratus ceiling dropped low enough to almost put your head in the clouds, making for grey days and slow flights.

The morning of of Tuesday, April 3, was just one of those days.  With winds out of the NNW, it wasn’t much of a surprise that not a single raptor was seen before midday.  (We’re still probably a couple weeks away from the Sharp-shinned Hawk peak, so not much this time of year would move in the absence of thermals.)

Low Stratus is terrible for hawks, but not all that bad for waterbird flights!

Instead, I was treated to a small but remarkable waterbird flight.  98 Canada Goose (4 flocks), 21 Common Merganser (5
flocks), 15 Common Goldeneye (1 flock), and 69 Brant (3 flocks).  For a moment, I thought I was back in NY standing watch at the coastline of the Long Island Sound.

As I would learn later, the Brant I saw were not just unusual for the Keweenaw and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but represents an all-time high count for Michigan.  Where I come from, these are common birds to be found in ample number along the Atlantic coast.  But to see these birds so far inland is indeed a sight to behold!  I’ve been asked to submit documentation of my sighting to the Michigan Bird Records Committee, and have agreed to do so.

We’ve also seen the first wave of the Canada Goose migration.  April 2′s push of 649 birds was followed on April 3 with 98 more.  April 5 saw 2471, with remnants of that flight bleeding over into April 6 with 453 more.  (3671 goosies in just six days!)  The lore around here is that there are often two waves of geese migration spaced some weeks apart, with the second substantially larger than the first.  I remember this well enough from last year, and look forward to seeing how our numbers compare to last year’s given the mild winter we’ve had.  On a side note, I’ve been told by several visitors that Canada Goose are “not exciting,” but I disagree.  Migration is amazing (and no less mystifying to science), whether we’re speaking of birds exceedingly common (Canada Goose) or absurdly rare (Brant).  And, in any case, it’s clear that most people confuse the migrating (& essentially wild) populations of Canada Goose with the more domestic gluttons (say people say “pests”) that hang out in city parks and on golf courses.  But I don’t discriminate.  Birds are awesome, end of story.

"Close, but no cigar!" (Cedar Waxwing & Bohemian Waxwing)

And if we really wanted to pin the blame, let’s not blame the goose; it was wildlife & game managers many years ago who started tinkering about and “introduced” this more sedentary next-of-kin to our majestic Canada without fully realizing the consequences of their actions.  A familiar story, don’t you think?

Other non-raptor arrivals include  Fox Sparrow (April 2), Belted Kingfisher (April 4), Cedar Waxwing (April 6), and Horned Lark (April 6).  According to Binford 2006, these last two are unusually early, beating out the Spring Earliest Arrival Date by several weeks.  Weird stuff!

Awaiting the Next Wave atop Brockway,
Arthur

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