philwire: I'm in the Baltimore-Washington corridor (30 mile
stretch of suburbia between the two cities), and the weather
here is getting cooler as Fall approaches, also. I've been enjoying the hawks also. They're flying quite high (some nearly out-of-sight) and being very vocal. I couldn't decide whether they were teaching their youngsters the finer points of high-flying, or whether they are calling others together to soon make their migration to warmer climes. I think it is very soon that a count is taken in the mountains of Western Maryland, as the hawks migrate southward. It's not unusual now (and as the weather gets colder) to see 5 or 6 at a time screaming and circling ever higher.

Mojo-
I hear the hawk migration in the east can be really cool. We get lots of waterfowl here in the fall, but not so many birds of prey (lots of bald eagles though). Birds of prey are my favorite, so I get pretty excited whenever I get a decent sighting.

Phil

Phil: My family used to visit an old friend (and he was OLD) when I was a teenager, and he was a trip. Among the many unusual stories he told...he used to trap hawks when he was young, of all things, and farmers would give him 50 cents for each one (he said) trapped on their farm. (Of course, killing hawks and owls was legal before 1961.) He told me hawks will land on the highest fence post in a fence row--even though it may be only 6 inches higher than
the others--just to have a better vantage point, and it was there that he would set his leg-hold trap. He told me the most hawks he ever trapped in a year was 300. He also told me that one Fall, YEARS ago, he was fishing in a small river in Virginia (that I know very well), and he heard noises coming down the river toward him, that sounded like drumbeats, and they kept getting louder and louder as they neared him. He said he was dearly frightened, and hid up against the river bank as the noise came closer. Then, he said, thousands of hawks flew over his head, quite low--so many that they darkened the sky, and their passing went on for many minutes. He told me he thought they had come for revenge, for all the hawks he had killed in his lifetime, and he had never seen such a thing before or after that experience. I'm certainly prone to believe him, as I never heard him be untruthful--and I've read that hawks will follow the same rivers year after year, during their migration. He estimated there were thousands of hawks. Anyone else ever see such a thing??

Mojo, I have seen a few hawk migrations, but nothing that spectacular. It's hard to say just how much was speculation or exaggeration, but I have no doubt, he did see perhaps a few hundred. Once upon a time, hawks were far more numerous than now. There were also more individual farmers, more chickens, sheep, pigs and even personal milk cows on each farm.....all of which relied on their respective feed. That feed attracted millions of rodents--food for most raptors. Only 3-4 species were ever truly chicken hawks. The Cooper's, goshawk, and merlin [formerly called "pigeon hawk"] and great horned owl were the real culprits. I used to have old issues from the '40's and '50's of Farm Journal and Farm Quarterly which had some really scary but true facts about which hawks were the true "chicken hawks." Yes, I really appreciate the editors of those magazines, even back then, urging our farmers NOT to kill the innocent species. Buteos were so often blamed for the kills if they were seen feeding on a bird or kitten actually killed by a GH owl or even another fur-bearing predator. This resulted in millions of hawks indiscriminately destroyed by people. Pesticides were another yet another issue.
I really loved it the one time several migrating Swainson's literally filled the huge elm just outside my bedroom window in 1998 when I lived on a farm near Hugoton, Kansas. It was dusk. I went to the west side of the house and looked at another big elm further from the house, where Icould see the hawks and there were probably about 15-20 in that tree, too. In the 3 years I was there, I only saw this happen once.
The biggest flock of raptors ever witnessed, again, only once, was a stream of turkey vultures flying to roost. their flock only mayby 20-40 feet across, but several miles long. It was the most curious flight pattern I had ever seen, but only turkeys...not a black in the bunch! They flew over my house or right by it en route! I estimated it took some 20 minutes for all the birds to pass. Totally awesome!

Tomato_Worm: The hawk sighting that the elderly man related to me was long ago--I would imagine when he was young--sometime shortly after the turn of the century. In my mind, if he exaggerated the number of hawks he saw, it was by mistake--he was quite honest.
Regarding the number of Turkey Vultures (which we call buzzards, here) you saw, that definitely was an unusual flight pattern--and I certainly don't know its purpose. I happen to know of a number of Turkey Vulture Roosts in the East--some quite famous--(as in downtown Miami, Florida, where they roost on the City Hall building, I believe, which is one of the tallest buildings in the city--maybe the tallest), and their migration from points north is documented each year, as thousands appear, there. We also have a roost nearby, in Frederick, Maryland, at Lake Linganore, I believe. A developer built an upscale housing development there 20 years ago, or so--but the buzzards (Turkey Vultures) had been roosting there for years (who knows how many), and can't be DRIVEN away. They foul the upscale houses, and the beach area they built by the lake, and refuse to leave. I also know of two, tall towers--hundreds of feet tall--one in a small town, and one in the country, where buzzards (Turkey Vultures) roost each evening. At all these places, I've watched the Turkey Vultures come to roost as night approaches, and I've never seen them fly in a formation, as you mentioned. They come flying in more-or-less individually, with much circling and flying about before they actually land, to roost. I've seen hundreds of Turkey Vultures in the air at one time, but in no specific formation. I think what you observed is quite rare.

I agree, Mojo. As I said before, hawks were certainly far more abundant once upon a time. I forgot to mention that turkey vultures lived year-round at Lake Whitney, Texas. I just thought it was so odd to see just a long, thin line of them flying to roost. Their formation reminded me more of stream of blackbirds when they would fly in huge, long flocks.
I have seen where TV's roost on buildings. Yes, they are messy. It is a mistake for developers to build on a place habitated by generations of migrating or roosting birds long before. However, if the vultures have simply just gravitated there as a result of their finding safer shelter, this is a problem. We should be able to legally drive away such birds from OUR stuff if they were not hanging around the area before buildings were constructed.
There are still a lot of people who don't understand these birds and want to kill them. I had one "neighbor" who routinely shot these marvelous birds just because she was convinced that they preyed upon "her" songbirds. No amount of logic and wildlife facts would convince her otherwise. Others have shot them for other reasons. I can still remember a particular uncle who killed vultures on sight, declaring they spread diseases. I tried to tell him how they did just the opposite, and how it was more of a problem when mammalian scavengers ate infected cattle carcasses, thus promoting the same disease.
The only thing worse than ignorance itself, is the arrogance that refuses to allow enlightenment.