Annual Hawk Watch at Bradbury Mountain State Park Now Under Way
AUGUSTA, Maine â€" The fifth annual hawk watch at Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal took off this week with more than 50 birds â€" mostly red-tailed hawks -- already observed during its first few days by the official counter stationed on top of the mountain.
(Media-Newswire.com) - AUGUSTA, Maine – The fifth annual hawk watch at Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal took off this week with more than 50 birds – mostly red-tailed hawks -- already observed during its first few days by the official counter stationed on top of the mountain.
The annual two-month-long watch, organized by Jeannette and Derek Lovitch of Freeport, is compiling important data on migratory birds in Maine. And because park visitors are welcome to participate, it also is encouraging more people to get outdoors during the late days of winter and the first days of spring, according to Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands officials.
As in past years, park visitors can make the short, .3-mile climb to the top of Bradbury Mountain and join official counter Andy Northrup in observing the migratory birds that head north each spring. If they don’t bring their own binoculars, they still can use the four pairs provided by Nikon Sport Optics, which is sponsoring the hawk watch.
“It does draw a lot of people, and it gives the park some good, positive attention,” Frank Appleby, park manager at Bradbury Mountain State Park, said. “It gets a lot of people outdoors to enjoy the beauty and unique features of the park, and it gets people up to the mountain top at a time of year when people normally don’t get out so they can enjoy the springtime.
“It also excites the kids about wildlife and about birds in particular,” Appleby added. “It’s a nice family activity.”
Bradbury Mountain Hawk Watch, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., seven days a week, March 15-May 15, Bradbury Mountain State Park, Pownal; state park admission; for more information, call 207-688-4712.
The Lovitches, who own Freeport Wild Bird Supply and are well-known Maine birders, started the organized watch in 2007 to compile significant information about bird migration by identifying and counting all raptors to determine trends. The hawk watch, which runs seven days a week from March 15 to May 15, began with private funding, but now is sponsored by the birding store and Nikon.
Originally when the watch started, “we were familiar with Bradbury Mountain as a good vantage point for watching raptors,” as there had been previous informal watching efforts there, Jeannette Lovitch said. She said what was wanted was a “good, standardized count so we could analyze data.”
Bradbury Mountain, with its open summit, is a “hump in the middle of the southern coastal plain” unique for bird watching, Lovitch said. It provides “an unimpeded view of the south where birds come from,” and the mountain also provides updrafts or thermals that the birds “use to gain lift to minimize the amount of energy they need to fly,” she said.
Last spring, the watch staff observed a record 4,474 hawks, including 52 bald eagles, 500 ospreys and 1,746 broad-winged hawks. Daily counts of all raptor and vulture species are submitted to the Hawk Migration Association of North America and posted to the BirdHawk list serve. Daily observations also are posted on line at www.HawkCount.org
The hawk watch last year also drew more than 1,100 visitors, many of whom got the opportunity to see a “kettle,” or group of birds riding a thermal, Lovitch said.
This year’s official counter, Andy Northrup, is a 2008 graduate from the University of Massachusetts, who has worked on a variety of avian research projects over the past three years, including other New England hawk watches and bird-counting efforts. Northrup is available daily on the mountain summit to answer questions about the raptors seen and to help visitors learn how to identify the 18 species that may pass by.
Among the trends already noticed is the increasing number of red-shoulder hawks migrating through Maine, with 17 counted during the first two days of the watch, Lovitch said. Black vultures, which are slowly moving their range north, also are being seen, with one or two each season, the birder said. “For Maine, that’s good,” she said.
Lovitch said it was difficult to predict what this season may be like, because the observations “are so weather-dependent.” Many birds moved earlier last year because it was such a warm spring, she noted. “So far, this is more a typical spring,” she said.
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