Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve

We went to Hawk Ridge two days for about two hours each visit.  Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve is one of the top spots in North America for witnessing the fall migration of raptors (hawks).  They have an Adopt-A-Raptor program that we were really interested in participating in this year.  If you are there when you adopt your hawk, you can hold it and release your banded bird back to the wild.  The donation goes to help maintain and support the nature preserve.  We adopted this young male sharp-shinned hawk.

During the Fall migration season, a naturalist is there to answer visitors questions and she does some informative questions as well.  There is also a hawk counter who is counts the numbers and types of raptors that fly by during the season.  You can see daily totals on the Hawk Ridge web site at www.hawkridge.org.  Between 35,000 and 148,000 hawks are seen in a given year.  This is proving to be a big year.  The day we left town (and thus didn't go to the ridge) they counted over 21,000 hawks for that day!

While we were there, we saw several different species of raptors including Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, Northern Harrier, Broad-winged Hawk, Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, Turkey Vulture and Osprey.  

Here are a couple more photos of our adopted hawk.

A young sharp-shinned hawk has yellow eyes.  Their eyes become orange and red as the hawk gets older.  The streaking on the breast goes from vertical to more horizontal the older the hawk gets.

Sharpie was keeping his eyes on Stacie wishing she would let him go.  Sharp-shinned hawks live in woodland areas.  Their relatively small size helps them maneuver through trees when trying to catch their food (small birds).