Hawk Mountain Headlines at HMANA Conference

More than 50 years ago, a conversation at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary between Michael Harwood and long-time Sanctuary Chair Joseph Taylor would lead to the first-ever “North American Hawk Migration Conference” held in Syracuse, New York, in April 1974, with Maurice and Irma Broun invited as honored guests.

While hawk counts began in 1934 at the Sanctuary, additional raptor migration count sites later emerged in Cape May, New Jersey, Duluth, Minnesota, and eastern United States and Canada. Yet, even as the number of hawk watches increased, no established standards existed for recording species data, weather conditions, and other parameters. Worse, no mechanism existed to communicate and share the data or interpret the raptor population trends.

More than 300 hawk enthusiasts arrived at the Syracuse conference, which read like a Who’s Who of government, academic and amateur researchers. Dean Amadon, Dan Berger, Bill Clark, Dave Evans, Mark Fuller, Richard Fyfe, Fran Hamerstrom, Michael Harwood, John Haugh, Donald Hopkins, Colin Pennycuick, Pat Redig, W. John Richardson, Chan Robbins, and F. Prescott Ward were among the attendees. Hawk Mountain Curator Alex Nagy also attended and Hawk Mountain was a main financial supporter of the conference.

Out of that 1974 conference would emerge action, addressing the need to pool and archive hawk migration data and thus formed the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA), established to create standardized count protocols. Today these data collection methods have been effectively used at over 200 migration watchsites across the Americas, and counting. Hawk Mountain remains a strong presence, with Director of Conservation Science Dr. Laurie Goodrich serving as co-chair, and former board member Christina Clayton and Sanctuary trainee graduate Esther Vallejos who both sit as directors.

Now as Hawk Mountain celebrates 90 years, it honors its partners at HMANA on their 50th anniversary, and it’s apt that three Hawk Mountain scientists with Sanctuary Board Member Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza will present at its Anniversary Conference in November 2024. This international event features speakers, symposia, and poster sessions that highlight raptor research and the history of hawkwatching and collecting hawk migration data throughout the Americas.

Ernesto will serve as the evening’s keynote speaker while Laurie opens the morning with “The First Hawkwatch: Hawk Mountain and HMANA’s Roots.”  Joining them are Senior Research Biologist David Barber and Biologist-Naturalist Bracken Brown. David will share turkey vulture migration patterns while Bracken is presenting on farmland raptor conservation programs and Hawk Mountain’s work with public outreach.

To learn more about HMANA, visit www.hmana.org.