Hawk Festival at Holiday Beach continues to draw large crowd

The Holiday Beach Migration Observatory (HBMO) and the Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA) co-hosted the Festival of Hawks last weekend at Holiday Beach Conservation Area. Madison Bygrove spreads her wings near the hawk tower.

How do you give a bird identity? You put a band on it.

“It’s like  Census Canada coming to your home,” says Phil Roberts.

Holding up a regal-looking hawk, Roberts of the Holiday Beach Migration Observatory (HBMO) demonstrated to a large crowd last Sunday how a bird is banded for future identification.

It was part of the annual Festival of Hawks, co-hosted by the Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA) at Holiday Beach Conservation Area in Amherstburg over the weekend.

Phil Roberts gets a hawk ready for banding.

Roberts explained that when they catch a hawk, they identify its age, size, and gender. He said that once a bird was caught at an airport in Quebec and through banding it was identified to be 27-years-old.

Bob Hall-Brooks is the president of the Ontario Bird Banders Association and he says the sparrow hawk is a common sighting but there are fewer of them.

“There are definitely less. When I started we would catch 100 a day and now we are lucky to catch 100 in a season,” said Hall-Brooks.

Both Roberts and Hall-Brooks are well versed in their knowledge of hawks and even go as far as banding tiny hummingbirds.

Over by the Hawk Tower, Natalie Emerick and Madison Bygrove, students in the masters integrated biology program at the University of Windsor were in charge of catching the hummingbirds to be banded.

 “We have to run over real fast because they can get out,” said Bygrove.

They explained that they use a hanging net and by Sunday morning had already caught three of them.

“There are a lot of them around but they aren’t going into the feeder,” said Emerick.

High up in the hawk tower, looking out at the conservation area, Paul Gosselin was tabulating Sunday’s count which included a few bald eagles and turkey vultures along with the various types of hawks.

While the annual Hawk Festival, which has been going since 1974 is a two-day fall event, he explained that they count the birds from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.

This year’s event featured information booths including Parks Canada and ERCA and the Owl Prowl Saturday night.

One of the popular events is the adoption of a hawk that has been banded and released. Larry Ludwick of Michigan has been helping out at the Holiday Beach Conservation Area for over four decades and he says the number of birds depends on the available food.

“When the food tells them it’s time to move, they move.”

Hawk Festival at Holiday Beach continues to draw large crowd

By Fred Groves