Hawkwatching

Also called hawkcounting, a citizen-science hobby in which experienced volunteers count migratory raptors, or birds of prey, to survey their numbers and build long-term data on regional raptor abundance that helps track population trends over time. Watchers gather at mountain ridges, coastlines and land bridges where raptors ride the updrafts these features create, the Veracruz River of Raptors in Mexico being an especially significant site where between four and six million raptors are counted each autumn; hawkwatches are often organized formally or informally by groups such as Audubon chapters, state parks or wildlife refuges, with data centralized through platforms such as hawkcount.org and eBird under the coordination of the Hawk Migration Association of North America, which publishes Hawk Migration Studies twice a year. Observers use binoculars, spotting scopes and cameras, identifying raptors by shape, flight behavior and plumage rather than by call.