Hi hawk watchers and hawk enthusiasts.
You're probably puzzled as to why you got a report for August 19th 2022 from Dinosaur Ridge when it isn't spring yet. Here's the explanation.
I am a hawk watcher from NY with 35 years of hawk counting experience at three different watches who just moved to Denver and was curious if there could be a significant migration through this site in fall as there seems to be no geographic feature preventing one.
In NY my wife Liza helped me at Hook Mountain for the spring watch for the past 2 years (which had had only a fall watch for 50 years, and was one of the spots I counted at) where we demonstrated an excellent spring watch with the next highest or highest for almost all species on the Eastern Flyway in 2021; as well as the I-84 Overlook in fall for the past 2 years (which had not had a regular fall watch for 30+ years), where we had 27 Golden Eagle in 2021 including 8 migrant GE on one day! You can see our results at both watches on Hawkcount.org or the latest HMANA's Hawk Migration Studies on page 30
https://view.publitas.com/hmana-1/hawk-migration-studies-vol-47-no-2/page/32-33
I discussed doing something similar at Dinosaur Ridge with Carol Cwiklinski when we met her at the watch this past spring and after we moved here 6 weeks ago, and made an offer that my wife Liza and I would go up on potentially favorable days this fall and see if we could demonstrate a good migration. She gave us the go-ahead.
I intuit that hawks should move south here in fall on North and East based winds because of the Front Range adjacent. NW winds are the most favorable overall for most hawk watches and we will explore this wind direction too. There will be a learning curve for us to find which would be the best wind, which compass point in relation to the hawk watch, how high the hawks fly, as well as what time of day, and we will intentionally go a few hours to explore days with "unfavorable" winds too. You never know what we'll learn!
If any of you wants to help us, we would be happy to have you. Even if you don't know a lot about hawk ID, another pair of eyes to find hawks we might otherwise miss, is useful. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the greater the number of observers at a site, the greater the number of hawks seen. We can help you improve your ID skills. I have trained many over the decades. Of course if you are experienced, you would be especially welcome, for you can teach us the finer points in the ID of species we don't see in NY. If you want to know the days we are planning to be at the watch email me at aiantony@earthlink.net
It's early in the season but we thought we'd see what's migrating based on sightings in previous years in fall compiled by Carol Cwiklinski and Steve Small and shared very kindly with me.
Ajit I Antony
Central Park, Denver
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