The Birds are Back in Town

Hawk Mountain field research staff and volunteers have been busy since mid April searching for nest sites and seeing which birds have returned. Two of last years tagged birds, Ridgena and Pocono Penny, have returned and are currently nesting! You may remember from past blog posts that we were not sure what happened to Ridgena since her last location from Colombia was on January 26th. 
Laurie went out to the old nest site at the end of April and confirmed that Ridgena returned after getting a good look at the USGS band on her leg. No antenna or backpack was seen at that time. We will attempt to re trap her to determine if the unit is still on, and if so, remove it so it can be refurbished and hopefully put on another bird at a later date.

We will continue to have people in the field to identify if banded individuals have returned to sites like Morgantown, French Creek State Park, Delaware State Forest and Hawk Mountain.

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 Chenango's interesting movements during her first year migrating. On fall migration Chenango spent time in the southwest portion of Mexico for about 2 months before heading to El Salvador. She stayed in El Salvador from 1/18 to 4/15. As she moved north, she hugged the Gulf Coast, went up through Texas and followed the Mississippi Flyway until she decided to move south again, down into Georgia, where she currently is located.

Chenango's fall `15 and spring `16 migration

    Sadie arrived in PA around May 3rd and was back on her breeding grounds in the Delaware State Forest on May 9th. We are currently working on locating her new nest site as well as getting a visual confirmation of her with backpack and bands.

Sadie fall `15 and spring `16 migration

Pocono Penny was back in PA after April 24th and at Stony Acres on April 27th. It was confirmed just 12 days later that she was reusing last years nest (see images below).  

Pocono Penny fall `15 and spring `16 migration

A look at all of the 2015 birds tagged in Pennsylvania on both southbound (downward pointing arrows) and northbound (upward pointing arrows) migrations, as well as wintering locations (circle points).

Movements from all 2015 tagged Broadwings

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   This is the first time in our 2 year study that we have birds reusing nests from previous years.Three nests are being reused in 2016, two nests from 2014 (one on HMS property and another in New Ringgold) and one from 2015 in the Delaware State Forest.

May 9th, 2016:  Penny settled down in the 2015 nest (PhotoCred. R.Farley)

Pocono Penny with visible antenna from transmitter

Adult Broadwing from pair on Hawk Mountain Sanctuary

  

 As of now we have a total of 9 confirmed nest sites throughout the three regions. We are hoping to confirm an additional 3-5 nests by the end of May. 

   Next week Rebecca, Zach and Randy will be headed on a little road trip to the Allegheny National Forest to search for Broadwing nests with the help from the staff at ANF. The goal is to find 3-5 nests and to come back after the young have hatched to put units on two adults. 

Be sure to check in on Chenango's movements at Broadwing Tracking Maps
Also do not forget to Like us on Facebook at The Broad-winged Hawk Project

Spring is Here

   March 20th marked the official start of spring, creating anticipation among the project staff as we await the arrival of Broadwings back to Pennsylvania. Last year our returning tagged Broadwing, Abbo, made her way into PA on May 4th. 
   Two of our birds, Pocono Penny and Sadie, have already started their spring migration. Pocono Penny wintered in western Brazil, close to the border of Peru. Sadie, wintered in southeast Peru, and was the 2015 bird to travel the furthest south. We recently received a location for Chenango last week but she is still in El Salvador and has not made any northward movements. We are hoping that Ridgena's unit comes back on and that she will return this spring. Her last known location was east of the Magdalena River in Colombia on January 26th. Since our last post, we still have not heard from Rachel Carson. Her last location was back in early December, from her wintering location near El Naranjo, Nicaragua. We still believe that she died due to the signals received from her transmitter. 

Movements of 2015 tagged Broadwings as of 14 March 2016

   Once the birds have returned to their breeding grounds we will send out our staff and volunteers to confirm tagged and color banded individuals have returned. We will also do our best to locate the new nest tree for any territory where we worked in 2015. In addition to this work, we will be trapping four more adults in 2016. Our goal is to tag two individuals on or near Hawk Mountain Sanctuary as well as two in the Allegheny National Forest of northwest Pennsylvania. The ANF staff located 5 Broadwing nests last year, providing a head start at locating nests and territories for this year.  

Be sure to check in on our northbound migrants at Broadwing Tracking Maps
Also do not forget to Like us on Facebook at The Broad-winged Hawk Project

Where are they Wintering?

Happy New Year!

Wow, the end of 2015 really flew by! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday spent with family and friends.

   We are happy to report that we are still receiving locations for four of the five birds tagged in 2015. 

Chenango, the juvenile tagged on migration is wintering in Mexico. Until recently, she was wintering west of Mexico City. Just last week she moved south along the coast in Oaxaca and has now made it to Tabasco. Ridgena, from Hawk Mountain, is wintering in Colombia in the Cordillera Oriental Mountain Range! Known as the East Andes, the Cordillera Oriental is part of the three branches of the Colombian Andes. She has been there since the middle of October and it seems like the perfect place for a Broadwing to winter!

   Pocono Penny (Delaware State Forest-Stoney Acres site) is in the Amazon in Brazil, not too far from the border of Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Once reaching South America, Pocono Penny's movements are the most similar to Abbo's. Currently, Pocono Penny is staying within one small area compared to Abbo who continued to move while on her wintering grounds throughout Brazil.
   Sadie, the third female tagged in the Delaware State Forest has moved the furthest south. Instead of moving into Brazil from Colombia she stayed west and continued moving down through Peru. Near the end of November she flew into the Tambopata National Reserve which is in the Peruvian Amazon Basin and her current location as of 9 January 2016.

   Unfortunately, we believe Rachel Carson from the Delaware State Forest (Mud Pond site) did not survive due to the location points prior to the last time her unit was on and signaled. She did make it all the way to Nicaragua and was wintering it what looks to be a agricultural area with fragmented forest. 

Movements as of 8 January 2015

Keep up with the birds @

http://www.hawkmountain.org/birdtracker/

   In other Broadwing Project news, Rebecca had a great trip out west at the Raptor Research Conference in November to present preliminary results on Broadwing migration. She met a lot of great people and met up with several former Hawk Mt trainees, saw some fantastic talks and enjoyed all things raptors for 5 days!

Former HMS Conservation Science Trainees at the 2015 RRF Conference. Top Left: Katie Harrington, Rebecca McCabe, Anna Autilio. Bottom Left: Hankyu Kim and Jean-Francois Therrien (Hawk Mountain Biologist)

   We recently finished watching the nest camera videos, and all of the data has been entered. We found many similarities between both years as well as some differences. We will be sure to post a few videos from the nesting pair in Shartlesville in the next blog for everyone to see. In addition to videos we have begun to assess habitat around nest and roost sites.

   The next few months will be filled with analyses as we being to dive into the data from the last two years. We will continue to update you on the birds and the work we are doing!

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.