Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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.