The Broad-wings are coming! The Broad-wings are coming!

Numbers of Broad-winged Hawks are ramping up at the Bradbury Mountain Hawkwatch, near Freeport, Maine! They had their first one of the season 05 April. And it was that, just one. Since then, the numbers have been inching up with 5 on Thursday, 14 on Friday, 6 on Saturday, and a big jump to 130 observed Sunday (19 April). Those numbers should keep going up over the next week or so. Keep an eye peeled to the sky: depending on where you are, this could mean Broad-wings in your area any day now.

In October 2006, I attended the North American Ornithological Congress in Veracruz, Mexico, to present a paper. The conference was subtitled “The River of Raptors.” I was so busy preparing my paper that I did not clue into the name or what “The River of Raptors” might actually be. Well, the day after my presentation, I went birding with Jeff Wells and two other birders. We made our way to the hawk watch station at Chichicaxtle. As we drove up, each of the four of us were amazed by the mass movement in the sky! There were hundred—no, thousands—of raptors, all heading south in a steady stream. We quickly found a place to park and got out of the car as fast as possible. Training my binoculars skyward, there were easily 500 (!) raptors in my field of view alone! And most were Broad-winged Hawks.

This makes sense when you think about it. Broad-winged Hawks winter in southern Central American and northern South America. Nearly every one of these northern nesting birds migrates south. With the spine of mountains to the west and the Gulf of Mexico to the east, the raptors are funneled over Veracruz. Add dozens of other species of raptors, and you suddenly have a HUGE migration through Chichicaxtle. On the day of our visit, we probably saw several hundred thousand raptors!

If you are curious about raptors in your area, check out the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA) for data (here in Maine, check out Bradbury Mountain) at https://www.hmana.org/hawk-watch-sites.

(The photo of a kettle of Broad-winged Hawks is from Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World website (https://birdsoftheworld.org).