Monday, October 17, 2011

Buteo platypterus














Broad-winged Hawk on the deck

"I first met the Broad-winged hawk as a child in the forests of southern Kentucky. I saw it only occasionally during the breeding season... Like the early naturalists, I knew nothing of its extraordinary migration and assumed, in my ignorance that it lived in the area all year... A few years ago, in Costa Rica, we watched Broad-wings, Swainson's hawks and turkey vultures stream over the rain forests of La Selva, a seemingly endless procession gliding northward on motionless wings."

On average, the count of Broad-wings migrating over Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania is 8,527 a year, the biggest count of any raptor seen during the migration season.

From Kenneth P. Able's, Gatherings of Angels, Migrating Birds and their Ecology, 1999.

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