Under Clear Skies

Battling Eagles - Steve Beal

Like a birding big day, but as it is a fundraiser for both Braddock Bay Raptor Research and the Hawk Migration Association of North America, focused exclusively on raptors. It’s a great chance to support BBRR by sponsoring us and help us maintain all the important research and educational work we do here. You can sponsor the event in either one of two ways: a flat donation to the organization, or to make things more fun you can sponsor us per raptor species seen on the day of the Raptorthon.

I figure that the per species route is the more fun way to go and a must for those that like a bit of a gamble 😉  There are I believe 19 species of raptor that have been seen over the history of the count at Braddock Bay (excluding owls) and of these, maybe the following twelve species might be expected on the day: Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier, Coopers Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, Red-shouldered, Rough-legged Hawk, American Kestrel and Merlin. The following four species are possible with a little luck: Black Vulture, Golden Eagle, Northern Goshawk and Peregrine Falcon and the if we see any of the following three species I will be buying a lottery ticket on the way home I will have been so lucky: Mississippi Kite, Swallow-tailed Kite and Gyrfalcon.

On the day down at Braddock we will have a number of fun events including: Hawk Banding Demonstrations, tours of the Hawk Banding Station and of course you can come up and join us at the hawkwatch and see what is going through (and make sure that I don’t add a couple of dubious Aplomado Falcons or Crested Caracaras to the list of raptors for the day). Saturday currently looks set to be a beautiful spring day so it should be a great day to get outside and join us.

Your sponsorship money will be split between BBRR and HMANA. Braddock Bay will be using the money to help update the interpretive display at the platform, so helping continue and expand the important educational aspect of the work we do and the HMANA portion will help support the upkeep of their website and database which helps us track just how our hawks are doing year on year here in the US.

You can find out loads of more information about the day, get sponsorship forms and all of those useful things via the BBRR website (click here). Thanks to Steve Beal for the loan of the eagle picture. You can find more of his work online (here).