By Cory Ritter
It seems that Broad-winged Hawks are often seen in distant kettles, and are just specks to the naked-eye. Well, that isn't the case when you're trapping them. There are some private trappers (not affiliated with WPBO) around here at Whitefish Point, and they're kind enough to bring raptors up to the platform every now and then. The broadwings really started kicking into gear just earlier this month up here in the U.P., and on one of those days, one of the trappers, Bill, was lucky enough to catch two broadwings in his set at once--and nice enough to bring them up for me to take a look.
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| adult Broad-winged Hawk, in the hand, Paradise, MI |
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| adult Broad-winged Hawk, in the hand, Paradise, MI |
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| banded tail of an adult Broad-winged Hawk, Paradise, MI |
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| adult Broad-winged Hawk, in the hand, Paradise, MI |
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| adult Broad-winged Hawk, in the hand, Paradise, MI |
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| adult Broad-winged Hawks, in the hands, Paradise, MI
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Simply awesome. Those birds really do look strangely proportioned. Their wings look massive compared to their bodies when you're holding them in that weird popsicle grip. :)
ReplyDeleteCory, we picked up a picture from your article to demonstrate the difference between an adult Broad-winged Hawk up close and an immature which was released by a rehab facility in our area. We are a small hawk watch in TN, north of Chattanooga, whose goal it is to educate and maintain a long term count in our area. We just crossed our 50,000 BW Hawk mark, of those who passed our site when someone was there to count them in the fall migration over the lifetime of our 21 yr watch. We are 125 away from counting 3000 for this fall, and since numbers are low, we may not make it. But I have placed a link to your site from ours. Thank you, for the marvelous pictures, and for all efforts to benefit conservation. I believe my readers will love making the comparisons between adults on your site and the immature bird on ours. I especially like that one of your shots shows the nice dark band that surrounds the wing of the Adult BW, which is one of the things we teach is an ID feature! As we always say, "Keep Looking UP!" Jimmy and Cynthia Wilkerson, Soddy Mtn. Hawk Watch http://soddymountainhawkwatch.blogspot.com/2014/10/pucara-part-ii-on-broad-wings.html
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