Hawksaloft.com | Peregrine Projects | N.E.Mac | nra
Well, here we go again: the third annual hawk watching handbill from the Natural Raptor Association [nra]:
"Memberships open to all... with proper identification | Our count, such as it is: various sites/unspecified dates | Our quest: truth, beauty & a good, long look at every hawk."

Printed annually in blazing color and distributed by hand
or tacked on old wood doors by night throughout the kingdom.
ANOTHER WASTE OF INTERNET BANDWIDTH took flight this summer – in August, as a matter of fact – along with nearly 200 migrating hawks.

HawksAloft.com is the web presence of your favorite dis organization for raptor info, the nra. Here's a quick tour of Natural Raptor Association home page at www.hawksaloft.com/nra/: Hawk counts aka counting for poets runs the gamut from Fall and Spring hometown watches, to Winter counts, to our adventures in counting far and away. All about Hawks Aloft is a little position paper modestly expanding on our mission statement that wraps around this handbill. The hawk watching handbills museum archives all the handbills ever published, adding photos and linking to info not previously available. And we offer e-mail services: you may subscribe to any and all of the RBA's of New England, or a selected RBA from anywhere in the U.S.: when we get it you get it. We also forward interesting hawk reports from all over and send out our own e-missives on events from here and there.

HawksAloft.com is not just the nra. At present, the most visited feature according to the ISP’s hits is Sonoran Desert Images: photographs from Edward Abbey country; and there's only one bird picture!
Back by popular demand, the Hawk Owl that greets visitors at HawksAloft.com and it's linked to that image.
Cape May came through again. Great numbers and views of Peregrines, Merlins, Coops, plus plenty of Eagles were had by all. The nra/WBA MTV beach house hosted a party to thank the hawk watchers and butterfly banders for their efforts. And on Saturday morning, partiers participated in the first annual Gray Treefrog Hunt at the hawk watch platform. One of the little glass-climbers was found and ushered out for all to see in under a minute's time! And returned.

The Golden Eagle Film Festival, held at the Pink Cottage, featured Thelma & Louise, Bull Durham, Powwow Highway, Pulp Fiction, sex, lies, and videotape, Hearts of Darkness, and Common Dragonflies of the Northeast. Do we know how to entertain or what?!

What is the essence of nra membership? It is oneness with the raptor, of course... There on the menu at Godmother's, prey no hungry Merlin could possibly resist: “Pine Siskins”. Or at least that's what the appetizer section seemed to offer but alas and alark, in the blink of a blurry observer's eye... “Pizza Skins”.

“Peregrine!” A voice like Pavaroti’s sent this one word out across the Cape May parking lot. It was not an unusual word to hear here, but I glanced skyward with reverence and reflex as I circled for one of the few remaining parking spaces. As I disem-parked, up came a winded but grinning compatriot, and author of the marvelous Owls: Their Life and Behavior, Julio de la Torre.

“Didn't you hear me calling to you? I shouted ‘Carrolan!’ I had to run halfway across the parking lot when you didn't stop. The raptor spirit is most certainly soaring with us today, my old friend.”

Julio and I watched hawks together for an hour or so, talked of spirits and friends and experiences – old and new. We talked a little about the local cuisine, both familiar and curious.
 
  • Take short looks to i.d. hawks. [This has several advantages: 1. by not following a bird you can see it again later & call it something else, 2. you don't see anything new when it comes to i.d., 3. practiced by all observers, new & confusing thoughts are minimized.]
  • Make the most of bad angles. [When birds are ass-end going away get real excited & always make it as rare a species as you can.]
  • Employ silent counting. [Don't call others attention to a bird, wait until its gone for sure, then walk over to the counter & call it anything you want!]
  • Utilize auxiliary counters. [Add hawks to the day's count contributed by observers who have just driven in or those who were watching elsewhere; allow additions to the day's count for hours and days after.]
  • I.D. by ambiguous field marks. [Primary field marks for migrating hawks should be size, darkness, behavior, & only add new field marks after they have been in use everywhere else for at least ten years.]
  • Keep scanning to a minimum. [This is an important one, as it makes all of the above items easier to implement.]
Here's a concept: Start the hawk watching season when the hawks start migrating. That means August at our Mt. Wachusett view-of-things.

New concept #2: Continue the hawk watch until they stop flying south. Well, we watch easily through October and into early November with our little break in early October to visit Cape May and Kiptopeke.

We talk about December hawk watches but so far it's just talk...
These "tips" are all from actually practices at one of the Mt.Wachusett hawk watch sites. All have been observed on multiple occasions. I wish we made them up but alas they are not our original ideas.
Okay, the graphic is a parody on one of those long distance carriers. But here refers to the Fall '97 ratio of Sharpies to Cooper's Hawks. Here too, we follow-up on a discussion/diatribe from last year's handbill.

The old 20:1 ratio garbage is so so out of date. For many years, with the decline of the SS, the best sites [Derby Hill, Braddock Bay, Cape May, & Kiptopeke] have filed reports indicating a consistent ratio hovering around 5:1.

The Fall of '97 flooded the Northeast with Sharpies for the first time in recent hawk history. Who knows why. But it would appear lots of acciptersex and plenty of good parenting conditions turned up the numbers. It will be interesting to look to the Spring numbers but especially the Fall of 1998. Will it continue the recent 10:1 trend?

Stay tuned.