News and Events

New Content-wide Assessment of Raptor Population Trends
(Posted 2012-02-01)
A new report by the Raptor Population Index (RPI) Project shows that the majority of the 26 species of migratory raptors across North America are either recovering or in stable condition.

HMANA Research Award
(Posted 2011-12-01)
The HMANA Research Award supports field studies relating to raptor migration ecology and behavior, population monitoring, and conservation.

Hawkwatcher's Exchange forum
(Posted 2011-03-15)
A place where hawkwatch sites can post job notices for counters or volunteers or where counters can offer their services. It is also a forum for general raptor-related announcements and regional discussions

More news...


Links

RAPTOR MIGRATION DATA OVERVIEW

Since its founding in 1974, HMANA has maintained an archive of raptor migration data that has been contributed over the decades from more than 1800 spring and fall hawk watches across the Americas. These archives contain more than 100,000 daily counts, representing an estimated 1,000,000 volunteer count hours, and more than 100,000,000 raptors tallied. As such, the HMANA archive of raptor migration data is one of the largest avian databases in the world. HMANA strives to make these data readily available to qualified users in accordance with this Data Policy. Permission to use these data must be obtained through HMANA under the requirements outlined in the HMANA Data Release Policy.

 

A major first step was the adoption in 1975 of standardized Daily Reporting Forms. Since that time, hawk watches have been contributing their data to the HMANA archives in this format, creating a huge legacy of raptor migration data. Since 1996, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, in partnership with HMANA, has housed and maintained the HMANA archive, reporting status in each spring issue of the HMANA Hawk Migrations Studies. A data curator appointed by Hawk Mountain Sanctuary maintains this collection of paper archives. Now, with the emergence of the Internet, ubiquitous personal computers, and state of the art electronic databases, HMANA has moved to an online electronic database called HawkCount, which has been tailored to the archival of raptor migration data for the long term. Conversion of the existing paper archives into an electronic archive is a priority and will be undertaken on a site-by-site basis as funding and volunteer time allows.

 

HawkCount is the underlying online database created and sponsored by HMANA to provide an electronic archive of raptor migration data. Originally piloted for the fall 2001 and spring 2002 seasons, HawkCount has moved into full production and now boasts over 85 fall 2003 hawk watches and 20 spring 2004 hawk watches as contributors of raptor migration data. From the beginning, our focus was to design ease-of-use tools for hawk counters and hawk watch compilers. Importantly, HawkCount supports not only near real-time entry of and access to raptor migration data, but also supports all available historical data. One of the very tangible benefits of HawkCount is that it provides a standardized and accessible electronic database for long-term analysis of population trends. In a process on continuous improvement, newly developed tools and utilities will be made available as they become available.

 

An important attribute of the HawkCount database is the collection and presentation of metadata, i.e. data about data. Metadata includes things like documentation of an inventory of hawk watches, locations and nature of the hawk watch, origin of data, data collection protocols, database description, time period covered by count, etc. Other metadata disclosed includes potential discontinuities in data, such as building a new platform, moving of the site a short distance, switching from one observer to two observers, adoption of formal protocols, etc. These metadata are freely posted on the HawkCount web site and should be closely examined by any researcher for potential effects on their research and resultant conclusions.

 

Historical data, prior to the current count season, may be requested at any time. Data from many HMANA hawk watches may not be available to researchers until a few months after the end of a spring or autumn season while it is being edited and verified. The HMANA Data Committee maintains a list of participating hawk watches along with a description of the years of data available, its electronic or paper format, and current compilers. Also included is other metadata such as locations, web sites, etc., as well as protocol manuals that describe how data were or are now being collected at each site. For specific information regarding sites and days/years of count data years available, see HawkCount.

 

Definitions of key terms may be found in the attached Glossary. Your questions and comments regarding the data archived by HMANA may be submitted to the HMANA Data Curator via email to data@hmana.org.