The Harris Center for Conservation Education hosted its annual Family Hawk Watch at the Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory in Miller State Park in Peterborough Sept. 10.
The observatory has been collecting hawk migration data from the summit of Pack Monadnock since 2005. Every autumn, thousands of raptors pass overhead on their way to southern wintering grounds, and staff tally the birds as part of an international effort to monitor raptor population trends in the Americas.
Dozens of people showed up Saturday with binoculars and long-range zoom lenses to scan the sky for a range of migratory hawks on their way to places as far away as Columbia and Brazil. While smoke from forest fires in California affected what would’ve been a perfect visibility day, birders had the chance to view sharp-shinned hawks, turkey vultures and broad-winged hawks on their way south.
Bob Holt and his son Malcolm, who is 10, made their way to the summit of Pack Monadnock to watch the birds. The father and son have been birders for several years.
“It began when [Malcolm] started paying attention to the bird feeder,” Bob Holt said, adding that he and his son have been bird watching in Maine, Vermont, Florida and at Plum Island in Massachusets.
Malcolm, who was using a pair of Nikon binoculars, said he has been interested in birds for a couple of years and would like to go out on a puffin boat in Maine.
“I think [birding] is just cool,” he said, adding that he has recently seen a number of dark-eyed juncos. “They’re really cute.”
Levi Burford, a raptor biologist for the Harris Center, is the center’s official counter. He said he likes the challenge of counting birds and that counting and identifying raptors in flight is one of the bigger challenges in birding.
Data collected from Pack Monadnock will be submitted to hawkcount.org, managed by the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA), and to the Raptor Population Index (RPI), a collaborative effort to understand and share trends and conservation status of migratory raptors in North America, continent-wide and regionally.
On Sept. 10, 111 hawks were counted according to hawkwatch.org.
Phil Brown, bird conservationist director and land specialist at the Harris Center, said the owl decoy that is staged in front of the observation platform where people watch for birds will sometimes draw the raptors in.
“The merlins sometimes attack it,” he said, adding that over the next two months there will likely be days when groups of 100 raptors can be seen flying through the skies. “No one knows when it’s going to happen, but people plant themselves here just to be able to see it.”
Each year, thousands of human visitors also come to the observatory to witness the spectacle of the migration. Asked how counters know birds aren’t being recounted, Brown said the hawks moving through the air tend to be propelled by a tailwind and that the birds will often look different depending on various wind conditions.
“We have data going back to the 1960s,” Brown said, adding that before this, there had been a lot of raptor shootings because the birds were not protected. “They were being shot out of the sky at some of these vantage points and that’s how the conservation of hawks began.”
Birds being counted include broad-winged hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, Northern goshawks, peregrine falcons, ospreys and bald eagles. Starting in mid-October through mid-November, the birds will include golden eagles and Northern goshawks.
Brown said hawks were regarded as vermin and some species had bounties on them well into the 1900s.
“Now they’re all protected,” he said, adding hawks were also killed for sport. “We’ve learned a lot and thankfully we now count them and conserve them. This is the 18th year of consistent hawk-watching and is a Harris Center-led project. Our other partner is Miller State Park.”
Brown said there are five birds with transmitters attached to them at the Harris Center so they can be tracked. Broad-winged hawks are solitary in the summer and congregate during their brief period of migration.
“We’ve been able to learn where they’re spending their winters,” he said, adding that a couple of the birds flew together to central Brazil and then nested a few miles apart from each other. “People can track Nubanusit and Harris, two of the hawks we’ve named.”
Harris Center Community Programs Director Susie Spikol said the hawk-counting takes place seven days a week starting in early May.
“There are some amazing birders that come out,” she said, pointing to a stream of broad-winged hawks that seemed to appear out of nowhere above the wind farm in Antrim.
Brown will be hosting a Zoom event titled “Migratory Raptors of Pack Monadnock” Thursday, Sept. 15, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. During his talk, Brown will provide identification tips, life histories and survival strategies of the various raptor species seen from Pack Monadnock each fall. For details, people can register at harriscenter.org/events.
“This will be a good chance for birders to refresh their knowledge,” he said, adding the talk will be geared toward beginners.