With almost 350 visitors to the Hawk Deck over the holiday weekend, the last few days of the season felt like one big parade with humans far outnumbering all the hawks I counted over the same period. Many of the visitors who come to Whitefish Point are birders who understand the concept of migration and are here to catch a glimpse of a bird they have never seen before. These birding enthusiasts come from places far and wide. In the past week, I have met birders from Arizona, Washington, West Virginia, and from as far away as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands! Whitefish Point is famous in the birding community for its birds, but it is also famous for its Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, and these ship enthusiasts invariably make their way up to the hawk deck, where they discover an unexpected world that some find truly amazing. These are the people that I find the most inquisitive. As one question leads to the next and as countless Blue Jays fly by their faces, they are simply astounded by the fact that they are EVERYWHERE, in such magnitude that it renders this conspicuous backyard bird virtually unrecognizable to them. In these moments, a Bald Eagle or a Peregrine Falcon flying past the deck can be a life-changing moment for some people. Then, when I have the opportunity to point out a Rough-legged Hawk to somebody (pictured above) — one close enough to take a picture with an iPhone — that, my friends, opens up whole new worlds to the uninitiated. Red-tailed Hawks are well known to people who live in the open country of Michigan. Even Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks are known to people who feed the birds. But Rough-legged Hawks are a gateway to the wild north, and that is why people visit Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — to experience the wild! The public relations aspect of raptor counting is probably the most rewarding along with the most exhausting part of my job. It is rewarding because I have the opportunity to introduce many people to raptors and show them the spectacle of bird migration firsthand. This is the energy that keeps me going. I need that wow moment to feed me, to give me a reason to keep talking to visitor after visitor after visitor for eight hours a day. All of this is done while trying to keep track of birds in the sky and also listening to any other birds that are flying by, and I am grateful for all of it. I have met some wonderful people on the hawk deck over the course of three seasons, and I have come to look forward to returning visitors because it gives me the opportunity to get to know them a little better. Even more so, I am grateful for those of you who read this blog and come to visit. I want you to know that I appreciate all your kind words and how much it means to me that you enjoy this blog and the blogs by other field staff. My colleagues are not only truly talented writers, I have never met people who care more about the work they do and the birds they study than them.

For those who read my very first blog of the season, I wondered what this season, my third season as the spring raptor counter at WPBO, would bring, and I have to say that this season surpassed my hopes with over 18,000 raptors counted in total. This puts 2022 firmly in the median of our over 40 years of recorded raptor migration data. Sharp-shinned Hawks, at 8,058, were our most common raptor, followed by Broad-winged Hawk at 6,890 (with one day left to the count, these numbers are subject to change), and Turkey Vulture numbers, at 611, continue to rise steadily. My most memorable sightings of the year will be the Swainson’s Hawks that graced the Point with their presence in early to mid-May. My greatest hope was to count one of these birds in migration, and I had the chance to count them five times this season. To see all our numbers for the season, click here.

Well, that puts a wrap on this season for me, but that doesn’t mean that there still won’t be some raptors around, so as always, keep your eyes on the skies.

~ Rich Couse
2022 Spring Raptor Counter

Featured Photo: Rough-legged Hawk. Photo by Rich Couse