When is hawk migration

There are several other aids available to help you. There are also several excellent commercial field guides to hawks available. Among the best are the following, any of which you should find accommodating. It might help to see them and how they vary before buying one or to read reviews to find the book best for you to begin with.

Roughly active hawk watch sites report their daily counts online to HawkCount, so hawk watchers can see what is going on around North America that day or season.

You can view daily, monthly and annual summaries of all migrants reported. Small numbers of hawk watchers operate some sites, others by bird or nature clubs, so the level of organization and coverage varies. HawkCount has a wealth of information to help you plan your trip to a hawk watch. Here, you may Select a Hawkwatch by Name or click the map on the state, province, or country you choose.

Clicking on the map brings up that state, province, or country and shows where hawk watches are located. You can click on a red pin or select from the list of hawk watches below the map. Either choice takes you to the hawk watches Site Profile. The General tab lists basic information about the site, including site contacts, its count season dates, history, topography, and directions to the location. The Data Inventory tab indicates the years the site has submitted data to HawkCount.

The RPI Analysis tab is only at sites with enough data to be included in the scientific analysis of individual species. The Migration Timing tab shows you. The average, maximum, and minimum season count for each species.

The three largest daily counts and dates of for each species. A graph showing you the average weekly relative abundance of each species at the site during their migration season s.

Another area where you can find detailed information at a site profile is to click on the Latest Count Data link above the row of tabs.

Then click on Data Summaries on the left menu bar. Here, you can see hawk count summaries for that site by year, month and day. Choose your parameters. Below the resulting table, in the top line of the Abbreviation Key , you see two links:. The Previous [Month] Comparison will show totals for all hawk species seen in prior years for your selected month.

The Previous Season Comparison shows the season totals by species for all years of count data. This is one of the most valuable overview tables provided on HawkCount, along with the migration timing page.

Volunteer to help at a watch site. Learn to help as a volunteer spotter or counter, help greet or educate visitors, or develop publicity for the site.

In , Montana discovered one of the best sites in the world for Golden Eagle migration! There are many ways you can make a difference to raptor conservation. Consider supporting us financially to maintain servers and help fund our research and education programs. HMANA consists of several individuals and organizations— amateurs, wildlife professionals, and scientific researchers from around North America — with a passion for hawks who work for raptor conservation in many different ways.

Our roughly contributing watch sites are independently run by volunteers, many of whom are HMANA members and donors, who have organized and maintain the watches and submit their counts to HawkCount. Some sites hire professional counters to cover each season. Some areas maintain exciting public education programs and hold migration festivals, all of which depend on enthusiastic volunteers.

People watch hawks because it is fun and exciting. Still, recording numbers of migrating and reporting them into an extensive international database lets us document migration and help determine population trends. While data from one site is of limited use, data from across the continent over the years is one of the best means of assessing the health of raptor populations.

Conducting counts and supporting HMANA are ways anyone who loves raptors can help make a difference in their future. HMANA also provides scientifically-reasoned opinions on issues of importance to raptors to government at all levels. Hawk migration is an incredibly complex phenomenon.

Unlike many songbirds, most hawks migrate exclusively during daylight hours, offering people one of the best opportunities to see them migrating. Quoting liberally from James J. But en route, migrants may encounter topographic features in the form of coasts or mountain ridges that concentrate and direct the birds; biologists call these barriers leading lines. Some species, including some raptors, readily fly across large lakes or bays, even open ocean.

But for the most part, birds of prey tend to migrate over land, where mountain ridges serve as important leading lines. The air currents associated with mountain ridges allow migrating hawks to conserve energy during flight, and hawks will follow these ridges as long as they point in the general direction of migration. Not all hawks migrate. Some primarily southern species do not. Many species are partial migrants, with northern populations migrating relatively short distances within North America and southern populations remaining sedentary.

Some migratory species now live year-round in many cities. While most fall migrations occur in September and October, a few raptors migrate south already in July or as late as January. Spring migration is more minor because of the perils of the long migrations and wintering deaths, especially for birds hatched the previous summer. Spring migration primarily in April and May but can begin in January and end in June. The fall migration includes the young hawks that fled that year, so more birds are migrating than in the spring.

Some spring sites along the south shores of the Great Lakes have exceptional flights where you can see some of the most significant hawk flights in the US and southern Canada. However, in most other areas, spring hawk watches are notably fewer than in the fall, and spring flights are far smaller. Some species leave their northern breeding grounds and make long migrations into Central and South America. These include the Broad-winged Hawk, one of our most abundant raptors; the Osprey, one of our most iconic raptors; and the Rough-legged Hawk.

Other species have even more complex strategies, such as the Peregrine Falcon, some of which migrate thousands of miles to southern South America. In contrast, others Peregrines migrate much shorter distances or do not migrate at all. Some Peregrines and several other species, such as Osprey, might migrate long distances over the open ocean. Experienced volunteers and staff assist with the training during early April and volunteers also count some days during March.

Annual counts for this day period average 1, raptors total with usual one-day peak counts of more than birds seen during late April. Spring flights are best with southerly winds and cloud cover.

Click here for Spring Migration Data. Hawks can be observed migrating past Hawk Mountain any day from mid-August through mid-December in autumn and in April through mid May in spring.

Most observations of migrating hawks occur between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm. If there is a strong wind, raptors may begin migrating at dawn and fly until dusk. However, at Derby Hill the count only got to , including broadwings, Turkey Vultures, and sharp-shins. Some of the more extensive clusters of echoes show miles north of Derby Hill, largely beyond the vision of the hawk counter on the ground.

Obviously a big flight occurred that day, but it was largely invisible from the count site at Derby Hill. Lake Breeze Diagram by Karen Burns.

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