The Hawks are Moving

It is now October and our birds (all but one) are out of the States and moving through Central America. Ridgena, the bird from Hawk Mountain, is the furthest south, with her current location near Kankintu, Panama. Following Ridgena is Sadie, who is in Honduras, and closely behind Sadie are Pocono Penny and Rachel Carson in Chiapas, Mexico. 

From our tracking data we have been able to compare dates between the 2015 birds: 

Bird ID	Depart Nesting Area	Begin Migration	Out of PA	South of TX	Passing over Veracruz, MX
Ridgena	22- Aug to 24- Aug	24-Aug	26-Aug	23-Sep to 26-Sep	26-Sep to 27-Sep
Pocono Penny	9-Jul to 12- Jul	-	3-Sep to 19-Sep	28-Sep	30-Sep to 2-Oct
Rachel Carson	-	-	18-Sep	27-Sep	28-Sep to 2-Oct
Sadie	30- Jul to 3- Aug	8-Aug	18-Aug	24-Sep to 27-Sep	29-Sep to 1-Oct

   

Unfortunately, we lost signal for Rachel Carson and Pocono Penny for a short time, not allowing us to determine their departure from their breeding grounds or when they started moving south. What is interesting is that even though they were out of Pennsylvania at different dates they all managed to pass over Veracruz, Mexico within a seven day period.

We are also very happy to inform you that on September 18th we were able to put out the fifth unit for 2015 (nine total for 2014 & 2015) on a juvenile Broadwing. Rebecca was spending time at the local banding station with the hopes of trapping one or two birds migrating through. On the 18th, the juvenile, weighing over 400 grams received a unit! What makes this bird exciting is that we have no idea where it came from. We are crossing our fingers that Chenango has a safe fall migration and a successful return migration in the spring. 

Thank you to Phil Campbell and Pablo Santonja for capturing this exciting moment!

If you would like to track our tagged juvenile, Chenango, along with the other four birds, visit the Hawk Mountain Broadwing Tracking page.

It's Time to Head South

   August 15th marked the start of the fall migration count at Hawk Mountain. As of August 28th, 121 Broadwings have passed over North Lookout. The month of September will be an exciting time for us as it is peak migration for Broadwings heading south. We anxiously await a good flight day in mid-September, hoping to witness a large kettle of Broadwings overhead, possibly with one of the telemetered birds. When we are not spending time at the lookout, we will be conducting data analyses from the past two field seasons as well as dedicating days to trapping Broadwings at the Little Gap banding station. We hope to  affix an additional two to four transmitters on migrating birds this September, putting the total transmitters deployed in this study to 10 or 12.
   If you have not already checked out our movement maps on Hawk Mountain's website, click the link to get daily movements of the newly tagged birds from 2015. Sadie, adult female from Silver Lake (Delaware State Forest) and Ridgena, adult female from Game Lands 106 (Hawk Mountain) have both left Pennsylvania. We anticipate Pocono Penny, adult female from Stoney Acres (Delaware State Forest) and Rachel Carson, adult female from Mud Pond (Delaware State Forest) will start moving south within the next two weeks.

   We are interested to see the comparisons and differences between the birds from 2014 and 2015. Dates of departure, arrival, migration pathway, stopover and roost sites will all be examined and compared with data from 2014. From the data thus far, we can see that Ridgena, Sadie and Abbo have all traveled through the large, contiguous forest along the Appalachian Mountain chain in West Virginia and Virginia.

Table 1. Dates each of the 2014 tagged birds departed their nesting grounds, started migration, left Pennsylvania and were south of Texas.

Bird ID	Depart Nesting Area	Begin Migration	Out of PA	South of TX
Abbo	18- Jul to 23- Jul	29-Aug	3-Sep	30-Sep
Kit	17-Aug to 19 -Aug	27-Aug	29-Aug	-
America	15- Aug to 17- Aug	28-Aug	1-Sep	1-Oct
Hawkeye	8- Aug to 12-Aug	27-Aug	8-Sep	28-Sep

-          Kit stopped transmitting on 18 September 2014, near New River, south of Hinton, West Virginia.

-          America stopped transmitting on 22 November 2014, northeast of Kankintu, Panama.

-          Hawkeye stopped transmitting on 9 November 2014, in Reserva de la Biosfera La Sepultura, Chiapas, Mexico.

   We suspect America and Hawkeye may have wintered in these locations, though we cannot be certain without further signals. Be sure to check our Facebook page regularly for photos and video links from the summer and updates on our trapping of fall migrants and the latest locations of our migrating Broadwings. We are excited to dive into the data and see what the birds were eating this summer and how that compares to last summer and to analyze habitat use and many other features. Wherever you are Broad-winged Hawks may be passing overhead, so enjoy the migration and check our maps to see if the tagged birds are passing near your home!