“When found on its nest, it often sits tight until the observer is quite close. Some individuals will even allow themselves to be lifted off the nest by hand,” Levine noted. (Andrle, p. 112)Occasionally turns up away from known breeding sites in mid summer. Listman, for example, saw one on 5 July 1959 along Payne Beach Road. (GNR) One was at Greece (J. and J. Dodge) on 4 July 1979 and another along the west lakeshore (N. Henderson) 12 days later. (GNR) Fall: The Monroe County annotated list (1985) indicated a range of arrival dates from 10 August to 23 September, with a mid range, or “normal arrival time” of 16 August to 1 September. Subsequently, 31 on 8 August 1999 (Ewald) at Braddock Bay were earlier “first of fall” arrivals (GNR). In most years had departed by 1 October, with a late departure date of 21 October. However, one on 26 October 1980 (Sherony) at Fairport was even later (GNR), as was one on 28 October 1984 (D. and D. Traver) at Webster (GNR) and one on 28 October 1995 (Griffith) at Durand-Eastman Park. (LG, November 1995)Good numbers can be seen during the dispersal flights of hawks past Braddock Bay in late summer, including 1,112 on 17 August 1991 when 2,218 Red-taileds also were tallied. (LG, October 1991) During 2001-2003, the annual late July to early September tallies were 451, 335 and 202, respectively. (Inside the Kettle, March 2004) Fall maxima: 275 on 9 August 1998 (Ewald) at Braddock Bay. (LG, October 1998) 1,112 on 17 August 1991 at Braddock Bay. (LG, October 1991)
Winter: Rarely seen in winter, when most have departed for South America. “In western New York I have never seen a winter specimen,” Eaton (1910) wrote. (Eaton I: 87) An immature that lingered at Flynn Road in Greece on 22 December 1963 (Listman) was the area’s first winter record. (KB14: 98) Another unaccountably wintered near the Castile entrance to Letchworth SP (D. Bassett) all January into February 1984 (GNR, KB34: 112), which was considered “very rare for this region and even North America at this season.” Misc.
Dark phase birds are occasionally reported, such as one on 28 April 1987 (C. Taylor) at Braddock Bay (LG, May 1987) and another on 14 June 2001 (D. Tetlow) at Parma. (LG, September 2001)
SIDEBAR: “ONE OF THE GREATEST SPECTACLES IN NATURE”
Fred Raetz was in the right place – Braddock Bay – at the right time – the morning of 22 April 1955. “In a virtually unbelievable half hour between 8 and 8:30 a.m. the air was filled with broad-winged hawks, many of them circling in very low. In those 30 minutes he counted approximately 3,000 of them and estimated there must have been a thousand more,” John Brown reported. (BA, 28 April 1955)Even that incredible tally has been exceeded. Brett Ewald, summarizing the spring 1991 hawkwatch, described a “gigantic wave of Broad-winged Hawks that inundated the hawkwatch” from 1 to 1:25 p.m. on 29 April. “These 25 minutes brought 8,376 raptors – a full 20 percent of the season total.” (LG, August 1991)On 12 May 1984, with a thunderstorm approaching from the west, Jeff Dodge tallied 2,906 Broadwings streaming by from 8 to 9 a.m. “in huge kettles of 397, 367, 296, 326, etc.” (GOS, July/August 1984) “In many places, hawk watching is the same thing as watching the Broad-winged Hawk,” Dunne, Sibley and Sutton note in their classic Hawks in Flight. “And why not? The annual spring and fall exodus of the Broad-winged must be one of the greatest spectacles in nature. Even veterans who have seen it for many seasons leave the lookout on the big day speechless with awe.” (Dunne, p. 32)The sight of hundreds, even thousands of Broad-wingeds circling within a thermal of warm air is usually called a kettle, but is also referred to as a “boil,” so startling is the resemblance to water bubbling on the stove. John Brown, watching a flight of Broad-wingeds spiraling almost out of sight, said the “Sky at times looked as though it had been lightly dusted with a huge pepper shaker.” (BA, 30 April 1959) This observer, seeing a large kettle over Island Cottage Wood immediately drew a less pleasant comparison: It reminded him of maggots crawling over a carcass.So what, exactly, is happening when these huge flights occur? As with other raptors migrating along our shoreline, flocks of Broad-winged Hawks take advantage of rising thermals of warm air off the earth’s surface to provide lift and help them conserve energy as they migrate north.“Adept at soaring in thermals; rarely resorts to flapping flight” notes the profile of this species in The Birds of North America series. “Typically soars up in a thermal, then glides to the next.”Migrating Broad-wings especially like warm southwest winds, Laura and Neill Moon noted in their summary of the first eight years of the Braddock Bay hawk watch. “A kettle of Broad-wings will find a strong thermal and climb in a spiral sometimes so close together that it looks like they might collide with one another. Often the number of Broad-wings in a kettle will continue to increase as other birds are attracted to the rising column of air. When they finally get high enough or the thermal runs out, they all peel off in a glide to the southeast. That is when we can count them best, but by that time they may also be very high. The kettle size can vary from five to 600 or more.” (KB 35: 26) However, even in late April/early May when peak flights of Broad-wingeds occur here, the water of Lake Ontario remains relatively cold. No thermals of warm air rise from its surface. So, as flocks of Broad-wings are pushed up against the south shore of the lake by the southwest winds, they “hang a right” and follow the lakeshore to the east. As the lakeshore curves sharply southeastward at the western part of Monroe County, the birds are funneled over Braddock Bay.How many Broad-wingeds might a single kettle hold? Carm Gumina recounted how participants in an RBA field trip gathered in the parking lot at Island Cottage Wood on 19 May 1996, preparatory to moving on to their next stop. “Someone said, ‘Hey, what kind of hawk is that?’ We looked up, and what was a small group of 5 Broad-Wings turned into an unbelievable kettle of over 1500!!! This number was later confirmed by Mike Lanzone at the Hawk-Watch.” (LG, June 1996)Unlike Turkey Vultures and Red-tailed Hawks, “Broad-winged Hawks will not migrate along the lakeshore in adverse conditions,” noted the BBRR report for spring 1988. (GOS, August/ September 1988) “They only migrate in good conditions wherever that may place them.”In other words, if onshore breezes begin pushing cooler lake air over the land immediately along the lakeshore, kettles may be kept farther inland. On 21 April 1985, for example, the southwest wind flowing into the Rochester area was “too weak to ‘hold its own’ at the lakeshore,” where breezes were still from the northeast, Laura and Neil Moon reported. Even spotters at inland stations at Frisbee Hill and Hilton Northwood Elementary school reported northeast breezes. However, the temperature was 7 to 12 degrees warmer at those locations. So that’s where the Broad-wingeds were found. There, and at Bailey Road, Parma, at the edge of the southwest air flow. Of 12,003 raptors tallied that day, only 891 were counted at the hawkwatch platform and the West Spit; the rest were inland. “Visitors to the hawk lookout reported Broadwings kettling inland as early as 8 a.m., and reports kept coming in all morning of Broadwings seen all the way south to Ridge Road and Ridgeway Avenue.” (GOS, June 1985)Moreover, variable conditions may produce widely different tallies at various points along the lakeshore. Consider what happened, for example, when Braddock Bay Raptor Research had observers not only at Braddock Bay but also at Sodus Bay in spring 1989. Peak flight at Braddock Bay was 4,247 on 21 May; Sodus Bay had a peak flight almost twice as large – 8,465 – on a different day, 26 April, according to BBRR’s summary report. (GOS, October 1989)Though this species is generally averse to flying into headwinds, flights do occasionally occur even when winds are unfavorable. For example, 6,000 were migrating along the west lakeshore 22 April 1965 on an “unfavorable flight day, with light northeast winds.” (KB15: 165)