South American bird of prey sets world record

From Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Kempton, Pa., comes news of a White-throated Hawk that became the first raptor proven to migrate north across the equator to spend the winter.

An international team of ornithologists from Argentina and the United States used satellite telemetry to monitor White-throated Hawk movement and watched one individual move more than 3,700 miles north along the western slope of the Andes from its nest site near the resort town of Bariloche, Argentina, (41 degrees southern latitude) to winter near Bogota, Colombia, (3 degrees northern latitude). The bird crossed the Equator sometime between June 8 and 11.

This record-setting flight for “White-throated Hawk #72349” establishes the species as the first known bird of prey to breed in the Southern Hemisphere temperate zone and over winter north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere.

The raptor is the second member of its species to be tracked by Lorenzo Sympson of Bariloche, Argentina, Marc Bechard of Boise State University, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary’s Director of Conservation Science Dr. Keith Bildstein in Kempton, Pennsylvania. The brain child of Sympson, the White-throated Hawk Migration Project has received critical support from NorthStar Science and Technology, the satellite tracking device manufacturer in Maryland that donated both tracking devices, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary which paid for tracking time and data downloads.