HMA encourages hawk watchers to support ongoing, established watch sites with their volunteer hours and assistance whenever possible. Consistent annual coverage at selected sites is essential to statistically valid trend assessment, a cornerstone of HMA’s raptor conservation efforts.

HMA also encourages the exploration of new flyways or sites in areas not well covered by established watch sites such as central, southern, and western United States and Canada, Mexico, and Central America. New HMA or HawkCount sites should be found in distinct locations and apart from other existing watch sites in the HMA network. Care should be taken to obtain permission from landowners to avoid the need to move sites over time.

All proposed locations of new sites should be compared to existing watch sites within the HawkCount network (see Find a HawkWatch). If a site is within several miles of an existing location, HMA asks that site compilers from the nearby watch site be consulted to avoid conflicts and to avoid using alternate count sites for that site. Moreover, HMA may choose not to archive the new site data in HawkCount as the data collected from the two places could overlap substantially. However, with the nearby site permission, data could be archived in HawkCount but kept from public view to avoid confusion.

To check if your site is a possible new site, fill out the new account request form online, with the latitude and longitude of the proposed location. The HMA data committee will review all new site requests and respond in a timely fashion.

Once a site is approved, the HawkCount database manager will contact the proposed site leader to finalize site set-up. Hawkwatch count data may be entered online at HawkCount, HMA’s hawk watch count database. Hourly or daily count totals can be entered online via the website or submitted as .xls spreadsheets.

If your watch site is already active at HawkCount, consult your watch site or project leader for access.

To establish new site access, please submit the New Account Request at HawkCount.

Since 1974, HMA has maintained an archive of raptor migration counts, contributing more than 1,800 spring and autumn hawk watches across the Americas (see Raptor Migration Data at Raptor Population Index. The use of data maintained by HMA is strongly encouraged. Hawkwatch sites collect and provide their data to the HMA data archives because they want it used by qualified users for raptor research, monitoring, conservation, and education.

Most data archived by HMA can be viewed freely on HawkCount. However, some hawk watches restrict public viewing of their data, in which case permission to view data can be sought by submitting an HMA data release request form. Regardless of viewing status, all HawkCount data users, especially anyone interested in analyzing these data, interpretation of hawk count data, publication, or reproduction of raptor migration count data, must always seek and receive explicit written permission for the use of these data.

Over the decades, these hawk watches have gathered data at high cost and effort and have proprietary ownership interests in the data they have produced. As a service to the users, researchers, and sites, HMA has developed a system to facilitate the use of these data while preserving the rights of individual hawk watch sites. Requests for data may be made via the data release request form and submitted to the HMA data curator (via the submission link on the form or via email.

Due to limited resources, HMA will not contact sites on behalf of for-profit commercial enterprises or in cases when data are to be used for a commercial project. We encourage businesses with an interest in these data to contact the site coordinator for each site. Site contact information is made available within each site profile. It is up to the commercial user to obtain explicit permission from the hawk watch(es) to use their data and provide HMA with a copy of the permission agreement.

HMA is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and is dependent on outside contributions. Any users of these data are encouraged to become members of HMA or make financial contributions to HMA. Because HMA has limited staff, requests for HMA data that require substantial time by HMA staff may require remuneration of effort on a case-by-case basis. Potential users of these data are encouraged to discuss such issues early in the process of requesting data.

Unless waived by the specific HawkCount site coordinator, HMA requires any user or researcher who uses more significant than 20% of these data (as measured by the number of count days) from a single hawk watch site to offer co-authorship on publications to the designated representative of that hawk watch as recommended by the site coordinator. It is the responsibility of the data user or researcher to resolve co-authorship status before any publication occurs. Because site protocols can vary among sites, HMA encourages all researchers/users to have the site coordinator review their results before publication to assist with interpretation.

All users of HawkCount data provided by HMA are required to acknowledge the hawk watch sites that have contributed data to the study, as well as HMA and HawkCount, as follows:

Data in this publication were collected by (watchsite1), (watchsite2), and (other source/s), and provided by the Hawk Migration Association (HMA) through its online HawkCount database (HawkCount).

Hawkwatch sites also may require specific acknowledgment, for example, recognizing key funders or supporters of their projects. The data user should contact the site coordinator before publication to obtain the list of additional individuals and organizations that should be acknowledged in any public use of their data.

Generally, data archived by HMA is available in electronic form. In the case of data archived in paper form, the cost of copying data forms may be passed on to the researcher. Data released to the user or researcher is to be used only for the purpose(s) described in the Data Release Request. Data may not be released or redistributed to any individual or organization other than those described in the Data Release Request.

Results of projects using or analyzing HMA count data are of great interest to the HMA membership. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to share their results or summarize their project with the HMA membership by writing a general interest article for the HMA journal, Hawk Migration Studies, or sharing critical findings with HMA members for use in HMA e-newsletters. Information on sharing results can be obtained from the Hawk Migration Studies editor.

HMA is committed to actively promoting professional courtesy, scientific integrity, and ethical standards in using raptor migration data that it maintains. For additional information, see Ethical Standards. Definitions of key terms may be found in the attached Glossary of Terms. Questions regarding the data or this Data Release Policy may be submitted to the HMA data curator via email.

You can request a release of data from HMA by simply completing our Data Request Form.

The Hawk Migration Association encourages tablet entry devices for hawk migration data collection. This allows for seamless integration of raw data into the HawkCount system in real-time, thereby eliminating the need to reenter data online at the end of the day. We are in the process of developing a HawkCount app for remote data entry but in the meantime, we encourage individual hawk watch sites to consider Trektellen for such data entry or directly entering your count observations into HawkCount.org from your hawkwatch. A tutorial by HMA board member Brian Wargo explains this process.