Hawk Watch

We’re traveling a few months back in time to mid-September when I spent a morning at an overlook that’s a good spot to watch migrating hawks. In mid-September broad-winged hawks are the most abundant migrants and that morning was no exception. The first birds that passed were some juvenile broad-wings, easily told from adults by the narrow bars on their tails –

More birds came by, most were juveniles, along with the first adults with wide black and white bands on their tails –

A red-tailed hawk, with its longer wings and “belly band” of brown streaks, sailed along the ridge –

All of these birds were utilizing bubbles if warm rising air called “thermals” to gain elevation. As the rising air cools and stops rising the birds can no longer gain elevation, then they glide to the next rising thermal on the route south.

Later in the morning more thermals developed and the hawks were higher in the sky. It was time to photograph groups of migrants riding thermals –

While editing these two photos I noticed some small spots in parts of both photos. Enlarging a portion of the second photo, it became apparent that these were also hawks even higher in the sky –

That made me curious about the other photos of soaring broad-wings from that morning. So I enlarged them all and one was quite amazing. The photo in question obviously showed six broad-winged hawks –

But zooming in showed there were more hawks higher in the sky; each was circled in red and showed an amazing 53 additional hawks soaring on that thermal –

Were there even more hawks so high in the sky that the camera and its telephoto lens (roughly equivalent to 16 power binoculars) couldn’t pick them out? Quite possibly, so there’s no way to determine how many birds passed that morning.