The Festival is over, but the migration is still on! You are welcome to visit us on the tower! Tower activities will continue until November 30. We hope we created many good memories! The Festival of Hawks only occurs through the very hard work and dedication of many people and we wish to thank them here for their considerable efforts. Thank you to the numerous families and individuals who took the opportunity to come out and allowed us to share our passion for nature with them. Big thank you to Bob Pettit, Dan Mennill for public presentations. Thank you to Liz and Hugh Kent, Bob Pettit and Tim Shortridge for managing HBMO HQ at the tower. Thank you to our paid counter Kiah Jasper, and our volunteers on the hawk tower: Chad Cornish, Olga and Roland Klekner, Paul Gosselin, Peter Veighey and more. Thank you to Lake Station raptor banders: Claude Radley, Chip Ogglesby, Tim Jarrold, Ron Delcourt, Marti Vardai and Allen Stewart. Thank you Marsh Station: Steve Dickson, Gary Buchanon,  John St.Louis, Corey Balkwill and Phil Roberts for public presentation. Thank you Bob Hall-Brooks for conducting hummingbird banding. Thank you to our songbird banders: Paul Pratt, Caroline, Alessandra Kite, Linda Goodhue, Nelsy Niño-Rodriguez, Sarah Dobney, Samuelle Simard-Provençal, Alysha Riquier, Becky Jardine, Emily Archambeault and James Alexander. Thank you goes to all involved with the additional work around the site: Hugh Kent, Claude Radley, Dana Ogglesby, Paula O’Rourke, Linda Goodhue, Peter Veighey and Paul Gosselin for taking photos of the event, and Corey Balkwill, Larry Ludwicki, Alessandra Kite, Xander Campbell for all the assistance on site. We hope we listed all, in case we missed your name, we thank you our volunteers. You all put in very long hours to make this event so successful. Thank you all for your support.                                                             

Click here to visit our photo albums.

Since 1974, during 30,395.8 hours, we have counted 3,863,077 raptors, and millions of song birds, Monarch butterflies, providing a vast amount of data for analysis.

OUR HISTORY

Holiday Beach Conservation Area was formerly a Provincial Park, but is now administered by the Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA). It is strategically located at the extreme South-western tip of southern Ontario. The park is on the eastern end of a large freshwater estuary known as Big Creek. (Specifically the site is 1.1 miles south of the junction Highway 20 (old 18) and Essex Road 50, Town of Amherstburg).
South-western Ontario has a funnelling effect on migrating raptors due to the geography of the nearby lakes and the reluctance of most raptors to cross large bodies of water. South-western Ontario is largely an area of flat, featureless farmland. There are only two geographic features of the note in the region. One is the proximity of the Great lakes, which influence bird migration in the area to a great extent.  The second is the shape of the province, roughly funnel-shaped with the narrow end to the southwest. These features confine south-bound bird migrants, especially hawks, to specific flight corridors. Migrating birds gain altitude over the flat farmland to the north and east, rising easily with the thermals that such areas provide in abundance. As the birds head south they meet Lake Erie and, reluctant to cross it, turn west. With appropriate wind and weather conditions, birds pile up along the lake shore and move west until they reach the narrow crossing at the Detroit River (or island hop within the river mouth). HBMO promotes the study and protection of migrating birds. Activities focus primarily on fall migration of raptors and other species. The Holiday Beach Migration Observatory (HBMO), was founded in 1986, by people who had been raptor counting in the area since 1974. HBMO promotes the study and protection of migrating birds. Activities focus primarily on fall migration of raptors and other species. In 1988, HBMO persuaded Detroit Edison to donate a 12m (40 ft) Hawk Tower which is now at the site.

As personal computers became the norm and the Internet emerged, HMANA became a conservation leader in applying new technologies. HawkCount was created in 2001, evolving from the reporting method created by HBMO member Jason Sodergren for a single site, Holiday Beach Observatory. By making the system available to all HMANA’s hawk watches, we are now able to produce near real-time data entry of hawk counts and make them instantly available, along with earlier data. Data for more than 200 hawk watches in North America are now entered and available on HawkCount. BirdHawk, the HMANA listserv, allowed hawk watchers to communicate directly with the greater hawk-watching community by enabling daily hawk count reports. The computerization of data gathered systematically over decades enabled HMANA to develop the Raptor Population Index (RPI) with Hawk Mountain, HawkWatch International, and Bird Studies Canada to provide sophisticated analysis of migration data over many years. The first analysis was published in 2007, and subsequent analyses are now available online at  www.rpi-project.org.

Meet our members and see our accomplishments over the years. HBMO photo gallery  click here.

Please support our programs. THANK YOU!

Identifying a hawk in flight is different than characterizing a perched bird. With practice, patience, and hours of observation the skills of flight identification can be learned. Here is a PDF identification chart to help along the way to learning this new skill.

Learn to identify hawks in flight during with the Eastern Hawk ID Program. Identifying a hawk in flight is different than characterizing a perched bird. With practice, patience, and long hours of observation the skills of flight identification can be learned.

2024 VERSION IS READY FOR DOWNLOAD  click here.

Experience the beauty of Holiday Beach and get a bird’s-eye view of the Hawk Tower thanks to DroneFlyTours.com!  Part 1 of 2.

This information has been gathered from the following experts and others mentioned in the text;

• Norman Smith started studying Snowy Owls more than 30 years ago.
• Tom McDonald from Rochester NY has been banding Snowy owls for 25 years.
• Denver Holt studies Snowy Owls on their breeding grounds in Barrows, Alaska.

Scott Weidensaul has been studying owls for many years and is one of the key researchers involved with Project Snowstorm http://www.projectsnowstorm.org/ . Visit this page to access some excellent information. Some text below is directly quoted from Scott.

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