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The Cape Henlopen Hawk Watch was founded about 15 years ago as a Sunday nature program offered by the Cape Henlopen State Park Nature Center. As interest grew and more local birders became interested, it expanded into a full seven-days-a-week, three-hours-a-day hawk watch, which it has been ever since. The watch site is located atop the bunker at the ocean end of the pavilion parking lot, where an excellent view is possible, ranging from Cape May across Delaware Bay, to the Point, the western side of the park, the Great Dune and the eastern Atlantic.
The purpose of a hawk watch is to identify and count raptors passing through an area on their fall and spring migrations. The Cape Henlopen watch is in an ideal spot, because it is at the confluence of two minor raptor flyways: one, down the Delaware River from upper New York state and Canada, the other, across Delaware Bay from Cape May, New Jersey. Coastal watches tend to see more immature hawks than mature ones. Inasmuch as the adults leave their nesting grounds before the young do, the inexperienced birds do not know the route to their wintering grounds in Central and South America.
Hence, they follow easily recognized landmarks: rivers and coastlines. Birds following the New Jersey coastline find themselves at Cape May, with nothing but ocean in front of them. Some, notably the broad-winged hawks, turn north, follow the western coast of New Jersey until the Delaware River seems less formidable. They cross it and head for the Appalachians, which they then follow south. The majority of the migrating raptors take courage and head out across the bay, make landfall at Cape Henlopen and are logged by the Cape’s hawk watchers.
The Cape Henlopen Hawk Watch is not alone in its endeavor to record the migration of raptors. lt is part of a nationwide network of hawk watches, all of which report their daily findings to the Hawk Migration Association of North America, which in turn makes public the received data both on the web (www.HawkCount.org) and in a yearly publication. In so doing, the totality of raptor migration data is available for scientific research and analysis.
Why should raptor migration be so important as to call forth such a nationwide effort?
Because the raptors are at the top of the food chain. Toxins in the environment build up until they reach their full concentration in raptors. Recall the near extinction of eagles and osprey because the excessive amounts of DDT built up in their systems had resulted in eggshells too thin to sustain the weight of a brooding female. Therefore, hawk watches perform a valuable service to environmental science as well.
Raptors are involved in two yearly migrations: one in the fall, to their wintering grounds, and one in the spring, to their breeding grounds. Hence, the Cape Henlopen Hawk Watch is really two hawk watches. The fall watch begins the day after Labor Day and ends when fall migration is finished, around mid-November. The spring watch begins March 15, to catch the early migrants, and ends May 15. Because of staffing problems, the watch can only operate from 9 a.m. to noon every day except in bad weather. It would be ideal if a second shift could be added: from noon to 3 or 4 p.m.; but more watchers are needed before that can happen.
What does it take to be a hawk watcher? Most important are a good set of eyes and a pair of binoculars. The watch can guarantee a beautiful site, gorgeous surroundings as well as the thrilling chaos of a really good day when hawks crowd the sky and the compiler has trouble keeping up with all the species. Those interested can call Liz Dumont at 302-856-2289 (evenings).
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