Above a Pennsylvania Hawk Watch

- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today we're up on a ridge in Central Pennsylvania and I'm joined by my friend, Greg Grove, an ornithologist and he is in charge of a hawk watch here on this Stone Mountain Ridge.

And we're gonna talk a little bit about fall migration of birds in general, and then talk a little more specifically about the hawk watch.

So thanks very much, Greg, for joining us today.

First, let's just talk about migration and what is fall migration all about?

Why do so many birds migrate in the fall?

- The migration in the fall comes down to one word in a sense, and that's calories.

As winter approaches, food sources are gonna start disappearing, insects especially for birds that depend on insects.

And then, the birds that depend on the birds that eat insects also have to follow suit.

So they're heading south where there's gonna be more insect activity all the way to Central America or South America in some cases.

But it comes down to in the winter, there's simply not enough food for many species, especially insectivores.

Seed eaters have it somewhat better.

They can get through the winter as long as the seed crop holds up.

- We have a lot of songbirds in Pennsylvania that migrate.

Roughly 40% of the birds that are here in the state will migrate south in the winter.

So they do a fall migration.

But you're up here at a hawk watch watching the hawks go by.

Why do we care about hawks specifically?

Don't we want to count every little songbird that goes by too?

- There are places that do count songbirds in the fall migration, so they are counted to some extent.

But hawks are bigger and more exciting, just capture the imagination of people more.

And on a good day in the fall, you can see as many hawks in one day as you might see the whole rest of the year in regular bird watching.

- Yeah, now as you'll see in the video here, this hawk watch here on Stone Mountain is like a deck elevated up about the height of the top of the trees around it so that you have a really good view.

- [Greg] From roughly early September through November, we are usually here somewhere around nine or 10 in the morning until four or five in the afternoon.

If it's a fairly good day for flights, maybe a few hours less than that.

But we're here every day except for rain, probably anywhere from four or five to eight hours of daily coverage which we split amongst several of us depending on the day of the week.

- Is the pay good?

- (laughs) Well, sitting out here all by yourself and away from everything is pay enough sometimes.

Yeah.

- [Sanford] You're volunteers.

- [Greg] We are volunteers.

We gather data, no question about that, and it's good data, but if didn't enjoy what we were doing, we would not be out here.

- Greg, tell us a little bit about how you view these birds.

It always surprises people to find that you're viewing them way up and that you don't really get a close up view of them.

- Most of the birds are well overhead and some of those birds are so high that if we didn't scan occasionally with binoculars, we would miss them completely.

But others come by not much more than eye level.

It just depends so much on what the wind is like on any given day.

For the most part, we are looking at birds from below, of course. - Yeah, and silhouettes at that. - Silhouettes, color is there to some extent, but really identification is more by silhouette and behavior and how they flap, that sort of thing.

And also to some extent on the timing of the season because we know, for example, a broad-winged hawk is not gonna come past here in November.

- Well, I wanna learn more about the hawks that are going by here.

And is it all of them at once or is it a few at a time or is it certain species during certain times in the fall?

Tell us about that.

- There are 14 species of raptors, which includes hawks and falcons, plus two vultures that count also.

So there are 14 different species, and no, they do not all come through at the same time.

There are definite waves.

There were a few that come mainly in September like broad-winged hawks and ospreys, for example.

And then, there are some in October that peak in October.

And October is the best month for diversity.

But then there are others that don't peak until November, speaking mainly of golden eagles actually in that case.

So each species has its own peak during the season.

And three of the 14 species constitute probably 70% of all the birds that we are gonna count.

Broad-winged hawks, sharp-shinned hawks and red-tailed hawks.

So it's always changing during the course of the season.

- Yeah now, let's shift gears for a minute.

You've been doing this for about 32 or 33 years.

- Yeah, that's about right.

Yeah. - That's right.

And you probably have some gut feelings about what's been happening over that time.

Tell us about that.

- Well, there's no question that numbers trend.

There are trends that are very obvious and even at our own hawk watch, but then when you put the together numbers combined from other hawk watches, they're even more obvious.

The one that probably almost everybody knows about, of course, is the explosion of bald eagles from the eighties and nineties till today.

Hard to believe that last year bald eagles were our fourth most numerous raptor here, whereas in the beginning, they would've ranked down near the bottom of those 14.

We probably see at least 10 times more bald eagles now than we did in the mid nineties.

So that's the most obvious and well-known trend.

And of course, bald eagles are bouncing back from the DDT days.

Other species have also increased since then, ospreys and Peregrine falcons to name a couple.

Besides counting the data, which we do keep track of, the other equally important element here is education.

People come in here and they have no idea what's going on up in the air.

And some of them leave here quite astonished by what's happening.

And we hope we've enlightened some people about conservation issues and so on that way.

So education is every bit as important as conservation.

- Yeah, at a hawk watch. - Well, yeah, and they're not inseparable, of course.

At a hawk watch, yeah.

- So folks, if you're out there listening and have an interest in visiting a hawk watch, as Greg said, there are about 12 of them across the state.

Go on out and meet the people there.

Encourage them, they're there long hours and sometimes it's a little bit dull when the hawks aren't going by.

So they'll enjoy educating you more and perhaps you'll get to see some hawks flying overhead.

Thank you very much for listening.