Hawks and Highways

The Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop in York, PA sits right next to Route 30, with a fence and 60 feet of grass between the parking lot and the busy highway.  That noisy strip of grass is actually a great habitat for a few species of raptors.  Although hawks may initially be wary of the movement and sounds from passing vehicles, they quickly adapt to take advantage of premium hunting opportunities.  Next the highways, hawks find easy hunting perches like utility poles, wires, and fences.  They sit and watch from their perches for prey like voles and mice.  Rodent populations tend to be high near highways because of the food found in trash thrown from passing cars.

The raptors that hunt near roads are usually the ones that like to eat rodents and other mammals.  Most roadside hawks in the Susquehanna Valley are Red-tailed Hawks.  Red-shouldered Hawks are more common near forested wetlands.  Another roadside raptor in our area is a small falcon called the American Kestrel, which often eats more insects than rodents, especially during the summer.  There is actually a common hawk in South America that spends so much time along roads that its official name is the Roadside Hawk.

During my time working as a biologist at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, we took advantage of how visible hawks can be from the road with a biweekly raptor road survey.  My coworker drove a set 34-mile loop at about 10 miles per hour.  I sat in the passenger seat and recorded all of the raptors we could see.