Last year’s Raptorthon brought many birds & some remarkable weather.

Bear with me!

What’s become clear to me over the past two springs is that this count needs to continue beyond the three year survey period envisioned by the fine people who put it together.  As a scientific project, this count provides essential coverage in the central flyway that HMANA uses to help assess the health of raptor populations nationwide.  (Unlike the northeastern US, there are relatively few hawkwatches in the Midwest.)  As an educational initiative, this count exposes hundreds of people firsthand each spring to the migration spectacle with an intimacy that is almost unparalleled anywhere else.  (Seriously.  Where else do birds routinely pass so close that they sometimes almost hit people and parked cars?)  As a conservation initiative, the data this count produced in 2010 and 2011 played a significant role in securing the grant from the Michigan DNR Trust Fund so the Township of Eagle Harbor (with help from several partnering organizations) could purchase the top of Brockway Mountain this summer.  (That means that the very spot we conduct our counts will become protected space permanently!)  As a focal point for ecotourism, this count functions as a healthy incentive for thousands of people to come visit and spend money in the Keweenaw Peninsula, one that doesn’t require bulldozing more forest or turning towns into theme parks.  (Even the thought gives me chills!)  So this count is a win-win for everyone involved, and it’s one of those odd exceptions where what’s healthy for business is healthy for the birds.

So, I’m asking for your help!  On May 31, shy of just one week from now, I will begin a Raptorthon atop Brockway at nautical twilight to raise funds for both the Keweenaw Raptor Survey and the Hawk Migration Association of North America.  Last year’s Raptorthon at Brockway raised over $1100, and helped stay some of the requisite costs in running this count for a full season.  Please help support this count by writing me with your pledge (email: bedfordhawks@gmail.com) today.   (Or you can also donate directly via HMANA.)  Because I’m asking you to dig into your pockets, it’s only right that I dig into mine, so I’m personally pledging $5 for each raptor species I see, and $0.50 for each non-raptor species I see or hear; and to make things interesting, I’ll kick in another $50 if the total raptor count at the end of the day exceeds 500 birds as it did last year.  Naturally, if you can be at least so generous, we would be ever so grateful, but whether big or small, your pledge/donation matters!

Thank you for allowing me this soapbox for so worthy a project.  It has been my distinct honor to serve as counter both this year and last, and it is my wish to see that this count continue long into the future.

With Thanks,
Arthur

Musing from somewhere below Brockway,
Arthur

And warblers are definitely approaching prime, too.  We’re now regularly hearing Black-throated Green Warbler, Ovenbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Northern Parula, Palm Warbler, and Blue-headed Vireo from up on the mountain.  Today, I also heard Rose-breasted Grosbeak and American Redstart.  Things are shaping up, and following my “tradition” last year, I’ll mark my first Northern Waterthrush with a beer (no, not on the mountain!) just as I did for my first migrant Turkey Vulture.

I still have some catching up to do.  Among other topics I promised to address were books on cloud identification, and Joseph Youngman’s Raptornet.  Also, we had a terrific group of school kids join us atop Brockway on May 4, and I’m reminded of my overseas counting experience when I think of how important the educational component is to any raptor survey and the community it serves.  I’ll admit I’m feeling the burn at this point in the season, so I will do what I can do to take all this on one bit at a time.  Thanks, as always, for your patience!

Good Hawkwatching to you!
Arthur

As good a day as any to watch hawks.

Yesterday’s flight seemed to help validate my suggestion in my previous entry about getting out on the mountain when the weather clears this week.  You really have nothing to lose.  Sometimes wind directions are less than stellar.  It’s true that south or southeasterly winds are indeed the “magic” winds for Brockway, and often bring the best (& closest) flights, and I’ve said this a lot.  But especially during peak migration periods, many species of raptors routinely migrate no matter what the winds are.  This runs counter to the usual “wisdom” that says that hawks don’t migrate except on such-and-such winds.  Or won’t fly if the winds are too strong.  Or <insert other pearl o’ wisdom that many hawkwatchers nod sagely to but never question here>.  It’s a mistake to conflate actual migration with the observed migration at Brockway, even if, practically, it may not seem like there is much point in splitting hairs (especially when you’re not seeing any birds, or they are ridiculously far away!).  But especially later in the season (as I learned last year), juvenile Broad-winged Hawk seem to move no what the winds are, and it’s possible to see decent flights even with northerly and easterly winds (something I would have considered less likely earlier in the season) so long as these winds are not strong enough to push the birds beyond the range at which you could detect them.  So, again, while we’re in this peak period, no harm in giving it a go even if things aren’t ideal.  You might see a lot more than you thought you would!

Cordially Yours from atop Brockway,
Arthur (who likes hawks just as much whether they are very close or ridiculously far!)

In any case, if the weather clears a bit this week, it might be seriously worth your while to drop what you are doing and try the mountain for a few hours.  There are never guarantees, of course, but you may find yourself handsomely rewarded for your effort!

I’ll close for now by mentioning that we also recorded our first American Pipit and Pine Warbler on the mountain on Tuesday.  Passerine migration seems set to pick up in the days ahead.  Stay Tuned!

========================================================================
Brockway Mountain
Copper Harbor, Michigan, USA
Daily Raptor Counts: Apr 29, 2012
-------------------------------------------------------------------

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
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
========================================================================

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

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

The flights of April 7, April 13, and April 14 proved to be quite strong.  I’m expecting the first Broad-winged Hawk any day now, but in their absence, we have nothing to pad our numbers with.  (*smile*)  So the 50 Bald Eagle, 96 Red-tailed Hawk, 41 Sharp-shinned Hawk and 39 Rough-legged Hawk on April 7 is good indeed. I would expect our Rough-legged Hawk numbers to begin to decline markedly from here on out, although I think we still have a lot of juice left for the Red-tailed Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk flights ahead of us (especially as we close in on the end of April).  April 14′s Norther Harrier flight was also good, especially when you consider that day’s flight had completely shutdown by midday.

We recorded our first Peregrine Falcon on April 11, and our first Osprey on April 13.  Interestingly, I watched that particular Peregrine and an Osprey on April 15 show little compunction before proceeding across Lake Superior.  Unlike many of the raptors we see at Brockway (e.g., Buteos), there is nothing particularly special about the features of this peninsula that collect these species in aggregate.  We should consider ourselves lucky when we see them!

And pertinent to the topic of this article, I spotted my first juvenile Turkey Vulture on April 8.  This may come off as completely unremarkable to some of you.  But  I recorded only 6 last year, and Max Henschell did not see any in 2010.  While I’m acutely interested in New World vultures anyway, I have a particular interest in this figure because the pilot 1992 count at Brockway found that an astonishing 92.6% of 619 eastbound Turkey Vultures recorded from the beginning of April through the end of May were “immature” birds (Binford 2006, p.263).  At this time of year, many of the classic features of juvenile Turkey Vulture that are easily discernible in autumn (e.g., dark, downy head & neck) are no longer in evidence, and most young birds will appear nearly indistinguishable from adults, especially at distance.  Those few birds retaining an immaculate trailing edge with the prominent juvenile secondaries will become even fewer as spring gets on, as each of these birds will soon begin the moulting process in earnest as they reach and pass their first full year of life.  I’m not sure to make of all this just yet.

Canada Goose flights continue.  Indeed, after posting the morning of April 7 about the goose flight, we saw 7935 more geese (102 flocks) that very day!  After a respite, another significant flight of 1680 (22 flocks) pulled through on April 13.  We’ve hardly seen the last of migrating goose this season, but I feel the 13758 Canada Goose we’ve recorded since March 15 is still an impressive enough figure.

Other non-raptor arrivals include the first Yellow-rumped Warbler that I heard atop Brockway.  They’ve been in  Copper Harbor for some time, so I was honestly surprised it took so long for me to record one at  Brockway proper.  (But then again, I’ve still yet to record either Ruffed Grouse or Wild Turkey at West Bluff, despite the fact that I’ve narrowly avoided clubbing both species with my car on a few occasions since  the end of March.  *sigh*)  Common Loon flights are beginning to pick up, with dozen spotted April 12 and a baker’s dozen on April 13.  I nabbed a glimpse of our first American White Pelican on April 13, only to see a flock of five more the very next day that I almost casually dismissed as a distant flock of Sandhill Crane.  (Whoops.)  Joseph Youngman spotted a flock of 5 Double-crested Cormorant the day he filled in for me (April 9), and I’ve had few more since.  Bohemian Waxwing have been conspicuously absent this past week, although I had a flyby flock of exactly 12 on April 13; this species held on much longer last year, with some late departures well into May.  We’ll see how it pans out this year.  Finally, the first Hermit Thrush and several Northern Saw-whet Owl made their debut in on April 15.  All in all, things are just ducky here!  (Although I’m definitely not seeing as many ducks as I’d like to.)

Wishing for Snow at Brockway,
Arthur

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