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Raptor Migration
Due to a ton of work over the next few weeks, I won’t be posting so much. In the meantime, please enjoy some photos from last Friday taken at Hawk Mountain in Kempton, PA.
If you’ve never been, here’s the scene:
A couple dozen people (on a non-weekend day) sit on the open face of a small PA mountain in Berks county and watch the raptors fly by. When a bird is spotted, someone calls it out and we all watch it come over the mountain. Workers and interns from the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary watch and record each bird.
Over 3 some hours on Friday we saw, 4 bald eagles a half dozen osprey, several red-tail and broad wing hawks, a harrier or 2, merlins, kestrels and a peregrine falcon, a raven, some turkey/black vultures and about 100 sharp shinned hawks.
I had my 300mm lens on all day… which is the bare minimum length for bird photography. Here are a few photos:
The Mountain:
Broad Winged Hawks:
Sharp Shinned Hawks:
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Turkey Vulture:
Bald Eagle:
just before sunset:
2 Comments
1. Eric replies at 1st October 2007, 11:21 am :
Wow. Ridiculously gorgeous. Do you know a birder named Tony from Philadelphia? He goes to lots of events like this and writes for uwishunu. You two would be BFFs.
2. Phillybits replies at 1st October 2007, 12:21 pm :
I’ve been meaning to make it back to Hawk Mountain before it gets too cold.
I went a couple of years ago with my girlfriend, just the two of us, and we spent the day hiking the long trail down through the river of rocks and back up again. When we came back out of the valley, we took a wrong turn on the Appalachian and started heading away from the park entrance and while crossing some large boulders, we stopped and about 3 feet away from us was a group of about 3-6 vultures just perched on the rocks and mulling about on the ground.
I might have a couple pictures and if I do, they’re hopefully from my digital camera, although we might’ve been using a disposable that day.
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