Sat, Apr 28 2007 - Watching migrating hawks at Beamer Memorial (View Original Event Details)
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It was supposed to be perfect hawk-watching weather. Really.
We met under cloudy skies and a light mist at the carpool location, and I thought, “This is still do-able!”
Halfway to Grimsby, however, I looked at the rain falling on Kirk’s windshield, and thought, “This might not be so good!”
The entire group was still game, however, so we continued on to Beamer Memorial Conservation Area, where we met TOC member Kathie and Niagara Peninsula Hawkwatch president John Stevens. John, amazingly, stood with us in the cold and steady drizzle and answered our many questions about hawks and hawk-watching.
He explained that hawks don’t migrate when it’s raining because their wings, when wet, become heavier – making it harder and energetically more expensive for them to fly. So instead they hunker down somewhere until things dry out. This explained why we didn’t see any hawks at all, except for a lone turkey vulture that was almost certainly a local resident.
He told us about “kettles” of hawks, in which numerous hawks spiral upwards in a thermal (hot air rising), and how, when they reached the top of the thermal, raptors will glide for miles with their wings in a fixed position until gravity eventually requires them to regain altitude.
He told us about the amazing ranges of some of these birds, and how some winter in southern South America and spend their summers in our north. He told us about the expansion of the range of the black vulture that occurred, in a grisly fashion, at the time of the American Civil War.
We learned that migratory hawks do actually eat as they migrate, and that hawkwatchers could tell when accipiters (bird-eating birds) in particular had recently found lunch because the bulge in their bellies is visibly detectable (hawks really aren’t very large animals themselves).
He told us of other places we could visit to see migrating hawks (there will definitely be a trip to Port Stanley this fall!), and how the Broad-winged Hawk migrates in groups in the hundreds or even thousands at a time. My breath was taken away imagining such a sight!
However, such as sight was not for this day in particular. The cold necessitated a brief hike around the conservation area to get the blood flowing again, and then we scoured Grimsby for a warm place with hot food. Eventually we settled on a place called the Dutch Store, which had a large selection of deli meats and cheeses (not exactly vegan-friendly, but fortunately we only had vegetarians in our group, and the grilled cheese sandwiches were quite tasty!
Everyone who participated in this event was such a good sport! But hopefully the next time, there will be many more raptors to observe!
Many, many thanks to John Stevens for his generosity in sharing his research and experience with us.
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.