Look up in the sky!

It’s a bird! And another! And another! And… oh my! Fall migration is upon us, and there’s plenty to see as the birds head to their wintering grounds. With a little luck, we’ll have oodles and oodles of birds streaming through the Brazos Valley.

If you’re like me, when I hear migration, I instinctively think of spring. Bright colored warblers, orioles, and tanagers. High Island and the coast. Fallout! Watching the radar and wind charts! It’s still exciting just to talk about it!

But there’s another migration in the fall and it’s a little different than spring… and that’s good! Fall is full of drab or indistinctly colored warblers that were just hatched this year. While that’s not the best news for making your lists, it is hopeful news for the birds’ populations! Also, fall is not particularly known for it’s fallouts or volumes and volumes of birds. There’s no real synchronicity to the migration like there is in spring, with birds flying overnight from the Yucatan and arriving at the coast about the same time each afternoon.

Swainson's Hawk hanging out at Horizon turf farm

Fall is more of a casual stroll. Not driven by over-pumped hormones pushing them to go breed, the birds tend to go at their leisure. Flocking up, socializing, catching up with old friends (we assume). Our Purple Martin experience this year was a good example of that.

So where is one to find the birds in the fall? Well, there are the usual places like Lick Creek or Brison Parks, although the going might be a little slow. Shorelines and turf farms are usually good for migrating shorebirds, although our normally reliable Country Club Lake has been lacking a shoreline much of the year (where’d all this water come from!?!). Horizon Turf Farm, and Allen Farms usually have some interesting shorebirds running around, but much of that depends on the state of the farming.

Wait a second! This isn't a raptor! We'll call this Loggerhead Shrike an honorary raptor... certainly a bird of prey!

One place you may not have considered is simply look up! You know all of those kettles of vultures we see all over town? Have a second look… are they all vultures? Are any of them vultures?! Fall brings in the raptors, kettling from thermal up-draft to up-draft and soaring effortlessly in between. What’s interesting about our region is that we effectively serve as a funnel to the raptors’ wintering grounds. This is most apparent down at the coast.

Red-tailed hawk cruising over the old landfill south of College Station

Several organization- including Hawkwatch.org and the Hawk Migration Association of North America- operate or collaborate with hawk towers around the US- from Cape May, NJ, to Marathon, FL, Smith Point and Corpus Christi, TX, Brighton, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Veracruz, Mexico to track, monitor, and count diurnal raptors as they head south for the winter. As the hawk migration season peaks, tens of thousands of hawks can be counted in a day. Several hundred thousand to a million hawks are expected annually in the Texas locations, and Veracruz usually sees somewhere between four and six MILLION hawks go by in a season! Sheesh. I’m glad someone else is doing the counting.

A couple of tidbits I learned while looking up some info for this blog. 

The standard model of diurnal raptor migration is the birds hit the skies mid-morning, going from thermal to thermal for most of the day, and then put down in the evening and rest for the night. All while staying over land, riding the convection currents down the continent. Well, as they say: It’s only a model!

Daytime raptor migration as illustrated by the Florida Keys Hawk Watch: http://floridakeyshawkwatch.wordpress.com/about/

Radio tracking Swallow-tailed Kites, Peregrine Falcons, and Osprey can set out over the open waters- both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic- when they head south. Now our very own John and Helen Baines told us about European Osprey that fly over the Mediterranean Sea to reach their wintering grounds in Africa… but that’s not quite the same! Of course, the European birds have the Sahara to contend with, but we’re not worried about that right now!

Additionally, this whole business of flying only during the daytime may not hold true in all cases. There are published reports of Osprey [abstract only] and Northern Harriers [PDF warning] migrating… or at least actively flying in a direction that wasn’t north... at night! I don’t know how common this is amongst our classic diurnal raptors, but it’s safe to say there are nearly always exceptions to the rules- especially when it comes to biology.

Now, why have I spent all of this time talking about raptor migration?! I mean, I know people are pining for a shorebirds webinar or a small primer on identifying leg color on a 6-inch sandpiper at 500 yards in full sun! [By the way, the shorebirds webinar is really excellent- I highly recommend it!]

Bald Eagles over Gibbons Creek Reservoir at the 2013 CBC

Well, I’ve been talking about raptor migration because we’ll be heading to the Smith Point Hawk Tower run by our friends at the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory for our September filed trip! I think it will be an excellent and informative trip. And if we’re good, Bruce promised to buy us some local delicacy crawfish-flavored ice cream on our way past Anahuac NWR! Yay! More details to come!