Hola,
I spend a lot of time at Snickers Gap watching hawks, and I'm often asked a
lot of questions by the non-birders that pass through about hawk migration and
especially the timing of it. I also realize that getting a good handle on
the timing of migration of the scores of species that migrate through here
isn't always the easiest thing to do, and not all birders are aware of the
peak
flight window of certain species. Broad-wingeds have a fall migration peak
that might be as distinct as any species that we regularly see in Virginia.
The next three days is historically the peak of Broad-winged Hawk migration
for the ridges and piedmont in Virginia, and up through the hawkwatch sites in
Pennsylvania. With the right wind and conditions, as well as a healthy
dose of luck, it's possible to find hundreds or even thousands of
Broad-wingeds
just by searching the sky. While being at a hawkwatch is advantageous by
having other people helping you search the sky, thousands of birds could pass
over virtually any spot away from the immediate coast (Broad-wingeds aren't
fond of flying over water, and tend to not pass over coastal hawkwatch sites
in
big numbers). To those who've never seen lots of Broad-wingeds, one thing
that I notice is that people don't realize the birds aren't always quite as
obvious as you'd think. Broad-wingeds are relatively small hawks, and even a
few hundred can easily fly past undetected. It's helpful to search the sky
with binoculars, looking for the "kettles" of these birds as they circle
about,
riding thermals. When they hit a certain altitude, they'll stream out of the
top of the kettle in a mostly southerly direction. Often if you find a few
birds streaming out, you can follow the line back to the kettle that they've
just vacated. If you can watch them stream out, they'll often form another
kettle and start the whole thing over again.
While this weekend is the peak of their migration, these birds don't always
look at the calendar, and can sometimes be early or late. This year they
haven't been early, so if anything, they might be a bit later. Many things
influence when these birds will fly, and the easiest correlation to see is the
weather. It is certain that there are still a lot of birds to our north, as
most hawk sites in New England and such haven't reported a mass exodus from
those areas. The tropical weather that Ophelia has dealt to the mid-Atlantic
has certainly not been conducive to them heading south, though this weekend's
forecast could shake a few birds loose.
If you're free and looking for something to do, paying a visit to the
nearest hawkwatch is a nice way to spend a day (always a good idea to bring a
chair
and a snack). If you can't reach a hawkwatch, but you still have a couple
hours to kill, get a chair and search the sky. Looking north is a good start,
and if you can find a hill with a clearing, that helps too. That said,
there was a woman in Manassas a few years back that counted a few thousand
from
the porch of her town house.
The five hawkwatch sites in Virginia that are staffed most of the time are
Snickers Gap, Harvey's Knob, Candler Mountain, Rockfish Gap, and Kiptopeke
State Park. More information about all of these sites can be found pretty
easily
online. If I missed a site, it wasn't intentional, and I apologize.
Cheers,
Todd
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Todd Michael Day
Jeffersonton, Virginia, USA
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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