Category Archives: Hawks

For the Birds: Inside the hawkwatch

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Photo by Chris Bosak
Young Cooper’s hawk in New England.

Last week’s For the Birds column highlighted the results of this year’s fall hawkwatches with a particular focus on Pack Monadnock in Peterborough. The column was heavily focused on data and the number of birds counted.

A number of questions came up in my head as I looked at the results and compiled the data. Not one to let questions go unanswered in my head, I turned to the experts for some explanations.

Specifically, I had an enjoyable chat with Phil and Julie Brown of Hancock, N.H. Phil is the Bird Conservation Director and Land Specialist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education. His wife, Julie, is the Raptor Migration and Program Director of the Hawk Migration Association.

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For the Birds: Breaking down hawkwatch season

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Photo by Chris Bosak A broad-winged hawk perches in a tree in northern New Hampshire, July 2020.

The fall hawkwatching season is winding down. Raptor sightings at the various dedicated locations are slowing down, with only a handful of birds counted each day as November progresses.

It’s a good time, therefore, to check in to see how the various hawkwatching sites fared this year. New England has several popular sites, but Pack Monadnock at Miller State Park in Peterborough is New Hampshire’s most active and popular site. The hawk count is a project of the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock.

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For the Birds: Flushing a Cooper’s hawk will get the heart pumping

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Photo by Chris Bosak Adult Cooper’s hawk seen in Norwalk, Connecticut, January 2025.

I was walking along a short but windy trail in southern New England the other day in search of overwintering warblers. This short path is known for harboring these tiny songbirds during the winter, as it is adjacent to a water treatment center that features open water on even the coldest days.

I came around one of the many bends and jumped back as I flushed a large bird that was on the ground next to the trail. With my heart racing from the surprise, my immediate reaction was that it was a ruffed grouse. It flushed with the familiar exuberance and noise of a grouse, so my mind immediately went there. Ruffed grouse, however, do not live in that area of New England any longer, and the habitat wasn’t right for the popular game bird.

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Christmas Bird Count 2024 photo highlights

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Photo by Chris Bosak – A merlin at Taylor Farm in Norwalk, CT, December 2024.
Photo by Chris Bosak – A pine warbler at the esplanade in Norwalk, December 2024.

On Sunday (December 22, 2024), I participated, as usual, in the Christmas Bird Count and covered my usual area of coastal Norwalk (SW Connecticut). Instead of my usual birding partner Frank, I covered the area with Adam and Jo. It was 13 degrees when we started and didn’t seem to get much warmer as the day went on. In fact, the wind picked up and made it seem even colder. The things we do for the birds.

We had a successful day with plenty of highlights, including bald eagle, peregrine falcon, merlin, pipit, pine warbler, yellow-rumped warblerf and both types of kinglet.

Here are some photo highlights of the day:

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For the Birds: Red-shouldered hawk perched on car in parking lot

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Photo by Chris Bosak – Red-shouldered hawk on car in parking lot in New England, May 2024.

Some birds have adapted to humans and what we have done to their habitat better than others. 

Pigeons, house sparrows and mallards have obviously fared well and thrive in urban environments. Other birds, including many songbirds, have not. Why else would the populations of so many songbirds have decreased so dramatically over the last several decades?

An experience at work the other day got me thinking about how birds adapt to human interference. I was working in my office when I heard a co-worker calling my name in whispered urgency. I rushed out to see what the commotion was about and saw a red-shouldered hawk perched on top of an Infinity SUV right on the other side of the window. 

The impressive bird of prey was a mere 12 feet away from the small crowd that had now gathered inside the building — urgent whispers have a way of drawing a crowd. Everyone broke out their phones and took pictures of the specimen. Red-shouldered hawks nest on the property at work, so seeing the bird was not unusual, but seeing it perched on a car was certainly different.

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For the Birds: Surprise sighting in unlikely place

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Photo by Chris Bosak – A young red-shouldered hawk looks out from its nest in New England, June 2023.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a short walk that I often take at work. It is on my employer’s property and, despite being a small piece of land that takes only five minutes to walk, it has a mix of habitat that includes a meadow, stream, pond and woods.

A few days after I had written that column, I took a walk there and discovered something new. I had noticed on previous walks a Y in a large tree and thought maybe there were some sticks or leaves in the crotch. It was too small for a squirrel’s nest, and it didn’t seem significant enough to be any other type of nest, so I kept on walking. I figured it was just the collection of a few sticks and leaves that had fallen throughout the year.

One day, however, I noticed movement in the area. Upon inspection, it turned out to be the nest of a red-shouldered hawk family. Two young birds were eating a squirrel, chipmunk or some other small mammal. No adults were present.

The next day, I took another walk, and an adult bird was tearing apart a meal. I didn’t notice the young birds right away, but when the adult sat upright after picking off a morsel, I saw the young ones to either side behind the adult.

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For the Birds: Hawks in a New England winter

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Photo by Chris Bosak – Young Cooper’s hawk in New England, January 2023.

It is not uncommon for birders at designated hawk watch sites to see more than 1,000 hawks in a single day. The fall hawk migration is most certainly a sight to see, particularly if the conditions are right.

With the sheer number of hawks and other birds of prey that migrate south through New England in the fall, it is tough to imagine that any of them remain in our region once the migration is over. But, of course, we do see a fair amount of hawks throughout the winter months in New England. 

Red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks and our accipiters, sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks, are the most common hawks we see in New England during the winter. Other birds of prey that we continue to see in our coldest months are the peregrine falcon, vultures and, of course, bald eagles, which congregate in large numbers where water remains unfrozen.

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A few more shots of the Cooper’s hawk

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Here are a few more shots of the Cooper’s hawk that visited my backyard the other day. Click here for the full story.

For the Birds: A different kind of ‘feeder’ bird

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I walked across the living room toward the large window that offers a view of the bird-feeding station and birdbath. I stopped dead in my tracks as a bird much larger than I expected to see was perched on the side of the birdbath.

Wisely, all of the other birds were nowhere to be seen. 

It was a Copper’s hawk, one of the hawks in New England that commonly preys on small feeder birds. The large bird of prey had no interest in the birdbath’s water — either for drinking or cleaning. It was simply using the structure as a perch to get a better look at the feeders and nearby bushes. It hopped off the birdbath and onto a hemlock branch I had discarded to give the feeder birds a place to hide. After peering through the underbrush and finding nothing, the hawk flew off.

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One more Christmas Bird Count photo

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Photo by Chris Bosak A red-tailed hawk perches on the top of a pine tree in New England, December 2020.

Here’s one more shot of the red-tailed hawk that we saw during the Christmas Bird Count on Sunday in Norwalk, Connecticut. We were looking for warblers among the pine trees and this bird flew in out of nowhere to entertain us for a bit.