Hawk migration underway

By SCOTT RANDO

UPPER DELAWARE — Broadwing hawk migration is well underway in this area. Last week on one day over 250 were spotted at Sunrise Mountain in New Jersey in just a few hours. Observed at the same time were some sharpshinned hawks, some osprey, a couple of Cooper’s hawks, an eagle, a kestrel, a merlin and a slew of migrating monarch butterflies.

A cold front had just passed through, and hawks like to migrate when they have a tailwind. The “kettle” that broadwings form is the result of multitudes of hawks finding and sharing a thermal and circling in order to gain altitude. When the thermal quits, they all stream in a southerly direction, gliding, until another thermal appears and they regain the altitude they lost gliding. Some of these kettles have more than a hundred birds.