Hawk Mountain Sanctuary ends its 90th anniversary season with record bald eagle count

Yahoo

18-02-2025

Last fall, the 90th anniversary migration season at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary set another record for the bald eagle with 668 of the magnificent raptors counted soaring past the North Lookout.
This record starkly contrasts with the low 50 years ago of a mere 13 of the large, dark birds with the diagnostic white head and tail that passed the lookout in the fall of 1974.
Now, that many can be seen in an hour or two on a good migration day at the mountain.
'It's just an incredible success story,' said David Barber, senior biologist at the sanctuary who compiles and analyzes the migration data. 'The bald eagle coming back from the DDT era when we weren't getting hardly any juveniles at all to where we are today is incredible.'
Dr. Laurie Goodrich calls out passing raptors to hawk watchers at the North Lookout of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary during the 90th anniversary year. (Courtesy of Amber Wiewel/Hawk Moutain Sanctuary)
Raptor species at the top of the food chain such as bald eagles, peregrine falcons and ospreys were decimated by the effects of DDT, which was banned in 1972. The pesticide weakened the birds' egg shells, allowing them to be crushed by the weight of the brooding raptors.
Rachel Carson, whose work in 'Silent Spring' sounded the alarm about the dangers of persistent, organochloride pesticides such as DDT, used data from Hawk Mountain migration records to help make her case.
The bald eagle has been such a conservation success story that a bald eagle can be seen pretty much any day of the migration season, which runs annually from Aug. 15 to Dec. 15, Barber said.
'Almost any day you go up there, you can see a bald eagle, whether it's a migrating bald eagle or resident bald eagle,' Barber said. 'And people love to see bald eagles.'
That fact has made environmental education much more real to those who are drawn to the rocky outcrop each fall along the Kittatinny Ridge in northern Berks County.
'It's become an ambassador species for us,' Barber said. 'It really draws people in. We can tell them the value of raptors, what raptors mean to the environment and their role in the environment.'
Other raptors, though, haven't fared as well as the bald eagle.
'The overall count was 21% below average with 12 of 16 species having below 10-year average counts,' Barber said. 'American goshawk, 67% below average; osprey, 32% below average; broad-winged hawk, 31% below average; golden eagle, 24% below average.'
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary senior biologist David Barber compiles and analyzes the seasonal hawk counts. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
The American goshawk in particular has been a species of special concern and has recently been placed on the state endangered species list.
'Those goshawk numbers were way down this year,' Barber said. 'We average nine per year now, and we saw only three. And declining numbers of goshawks are being seen throughout all watch sites in Pennsylvania.'
The irony of the goshawk decline is that it is the species that first alerted conservationists to the hawk shooting along the Kittatinny Ridge in the early 20th century. The Pennsylvania Game Commission had offered a $5 bounty on each goshawk sent to them in an effort to eradicate what they believed at the time to be a destructive species. The state ornithologist was curious about the large numbers of goshawks shot near Eckville and submitted to the game commission for the bounty. He paid a visit to the site and found raptors of many species shot along the ridge.
The extent and timing of the migration wasn't fully known until local ornithologist and Reading Public Museum assistant director Earl L. Poole visited the mountain from 1929 to 1933 to record the pulse of the migration.
When New York conservationist Rosalie Edge leased the mountain in 1934 and brought on ornithologists Maurice and Irma Broun to act as stewards, Hawk Mountain as a raptor sanctuary was born.
Broun began counting the raptors that flew by the North Lookout, starting the world's longest continuing hawk migration database.
Broun also counted other non-raptor bird species that flew by, a scientific tradition that continues today.
'One encouraging note, the blue jay numbers were incredible this year,' Barber said.
'What's really cool about blue jays that migrate past North Lookout is they don't call,' he said. 'They're silent, which is really weird. You can see a flock with 300 blue jays, which you expect would be making raucous noise, and they're just completely quiet. We had 11,527 for the year with a single-day high count of 4,359 on Sept. 30.'
The sanctuary staff has also been keeping count of monarch butterflies, which had the lowest number in the last 20 years at 288.
In all, 12,546 raptors were counted this fall along with 63,923 non-raptors of 146 species.
The bald eagle was the definite highlight of the season, particularly since then-President Joe Biden on Christmas Eve signed legislation designating the bald eagle as the official national bird.
'I've been here 25 years,' Barber said. 'The total my first year was like 140, and this year we had 668.
'It's just an incredible success story.'