Laurie J. Goodrich

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary · Conservation Science

Urbanization increasingly causes alterations in prey diversity and abundance, land cover, and human disturbance, subsequently impacting populations of even the most adaptable species. American Kestrels are currently considered urban adapters, which may be veiling the influence of urbanization on their continental population decline. We quantified o...

Migratory raptors can fuel their journeys by feeding along the way. To maximize migration success, raptors are suspected to time their movements with the availability of their prey. Feeding rates can vary among species depending on migration distance (long vs. short distance), flight strategies (flapping vs. soaring), and within species according t...

Using fall migration trend data from the Raptor Population Index analyses (n = 59 count sites) paired with winter Christmas Bird Count trend data at the USA state and Canadian province level, we evaluated continental and regional patterns in trends of American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) over the last 30 yr. Long-term trends at the continental and...

Divergent life histories by sex are common within species of birds; thus, the ability to accurately determine sex is essential in many studies of avian ecology and can possibly lead to more effective conservation strategies. However, sex determination can be difficult in species not displaying dimorphic plumage, including most raptors, and size dim...

The Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) is one of the most easily observed North American raptors during migration, yet little is known about its distribution during the nonbreeding season. To better understand the winter distribution of Broad-winged Hawks by age, we compiled 2164 Broad-winged Hawk sightings with age data and 25,797 sightings wit...

Raptors are of global conservation concern and thus country-level assessments of their status are needed. We review studies and conservation databases to determine priorities for raptor conservation within the USA and Canada. We specifically examine databases compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), BirdLife Intern...

For many avian species, spatial migration patterns remain largely undescribed, especially across hemispheric extents. Recent advancements in tracking technologies and high‐resolution species distribution models (i.e., eBird Status and Trends products) provide new insights into migratory bird movements and offer a promising opportunity for integrati...

The White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) is usually considered a resident species, despite occasional reports of local movement. We show that the eastern North American population engages in regular, approximately biennial irruptive migration that extends from the northern edge of the range to as far south as the mid-Atlantic states. Both a...

The Broad-winged Hawk (BWHA, Buteo platypterus) is a small, secretive hawk with distinguishing broad black tail bands that breeds in northeastern North America. The hawk nests in deciduous or mixed forest, often near water, and close to clearings or forest edges. Land conversion and fragmentation alters the landscape and reduces the area of contigu...

Most raptor populations are declining and nearly a fifth are threatened with extinction; thus there is a need to increase collaboration to ensure efficient and effective research, management, and conservation. Here, we introduce the Global Raptor Impact Network (GRIN; www.globalraptors.org), a tool to enhance collaboration and conservation impact o...

The Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) is an obligate long-distance migrant that breeds in deciduous and mixed forests of North America and migrates to Neotropical regions to overwinter. Despite advances in understanding the breeding ecology and migration of this species, the overwintering period and associated threats remain understudied. We us...

Aim Assessing long‐term shifts in faunal assemblages is important to understand the consequences of ongoing global environmental change. One approach to assess drivers of assemblage changes is to identify the traits associated with synchronous shifts in count trends among species. Our research identified traits influencing trends in 73 years of cou...

The Little Gap Raptor Banding Station in Danielsville, PA, is located along the Kittatinny Ridge and has been in operation since 1974. Every fall raptors have been banded there at two locations using baited mist nets and a bow trap. In this study, we summarized birds banded at Little Gap from 1974-2018 by year and species and quantified raptor morp...

Recent conservation plans for long-distance Neotropical migrant birds have emphasized the importance of understanding the ecology and threats facing a species throughout its life cycle, including migration and overwintering periods. To better understand the ecology of Broad-winged Hawks (Buteo platypterus) during the nonbreeding period, we followed...

We used observation data from major hawk-watch sites in northeastern North America to assess multiyear cycles in breeding productivity of the Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius). We found that autumn totals of migrating harriers for 1983–2017 autocorrelated positively at the 4-yr lag for interior, but not Atlantic coastal, counts. The autocorrelati...

Broad-winged Hawks (Buteo platypterus) concentrate in large numbers during migration but several sources suggest regional declines in eastern North America may be occurring, perhaps due to increasing human development, natural resource exploitation, and suburbanization of forests. To better understand the natural history of this secretive nesting s...

Nearly 300 species of landbirds, whose populations total billions, migrate between the Neotropics and North America. Many migratory populations are in steep decline, and migration is often identified as the greatest source of annual mortality. Identifying birds’ needs on migration is therefore central to designing conservation actions for Nearctic-...

Climate change can affect the distribution, abundance, and phenology of organisms globally. Variations in the timing of passage during autumn and spring migration can have consequences at individual and population levels. We assessed whether global climatic indexes and increasing air temperature over a 28 yr period were concurrent with shifts in th...

Global change can affect several aspects of bird biology, including population size and migration timing. We used count data collected during 25 years (1990-2014) at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a raptor migration watch-site in eastern Pennsylvania, to investigate population changes in Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) and the timing of...

An increasing body of scientific evidence supports the idea that many avian species are changing their migratory behavior as a result of climate change, land-use change, or both. We assessed Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) population trends in 2 parts of the annual cycle (fall migration and winter) to better understand regional population trend...

Raptors associated with grasslands are a conservation concern in eastern North America. We assessed land use/land cover (LULC) associations of Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus L.) and Short-eared Owl (Asio flammeus) in Pennsylvania from 2012-2015. Observations of both species were derived from citizen science datasets (eBird and Pennsylvania Farmla...

Extralimital records of birds, including diurnal raptors, are frequently set in localities along migration flyways. Normally, these records pertain to a few individuals that are away from their usual flight routes and found in areas that range from tens to a few hundred km from their usual distribution. Here, we report 77 migration records of Nearc...

ABSTP, ACT.--Packed cell volume (%), total solids (g/dl), white blood cell count (cells/tl), differential and absolute white blood cell counts, and prevalence of hemoparasites were determined for 85 healthy sharp- shinned hawks (Accipiter striatus) during the 1991 fall migration. The packed cell volume (47.6 + 6.73%), total solids (2.83 _+ 0.58 g/d...

Climatic factors influence migration behavior in both short-and long-distance migratory birds. The Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) is a long-distance migrant that exhibits a regular calendar-like migration pattern, with some interannual variability during both the northbound and southbound migrations. We examined the relationship between the...

In most northern temperate regions diurnal birds of prey, or raptors, migrate seasonally between their breeding and wintering grounds. Although their populations can be logistically difficult to survey and monitor because the birds are largely secretive and wide-ranging, most raptors are obligate or facultative soaring migrants that congregate alon...

We examined banding encounter records from 1920 to 2006 for three raptors that are commonly banded in North America: American Kestrel (Falco sparverius, 4707 encounters), Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus; 5256), and Cooper's Hawk (A. cooperii; 3848). We selected birds banded during summer or autumn migration and encountered during winter to i...

We investigated territory-level habitat use patterns of 132 color-banded male Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla) over a 12-year period at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in eastern Pennsylvania. Our primary goals were to test hypotheses concerning selection behavior as well as to describe territory fidelity of an area-sensitive Neotropical migrant by quantify...

Los censos durante la migración han sido utilizados como una herramienta válida para determinar estatus poblacionales de aves rapaces. En Veracruz, México, éstos tienen la posibilidad de generar valiosa información sobre poblaciones a escala regional y continental, y de proveer cobertura para aquellas que no son estudiadas en otros sitios. Los obje...

Continental-scale bird population estimates are used as a decision-support tool in conservation plans. The calculation of these estimates includes the use of density values and survey data from one or multiple sources extrapolated to the geographic scale of interest. In this paper, we use migration count data from a migration monitoring project in...

Background/Question/Methods Episodic events can play an important role in influencing forest composition and ecology. Severe climatic events in eastern deciduous forests may contribute to the creation of canopy gaps and influence subsequent forest regeneration. We studied the impact on a forest community of a January 2005 ice storm that affected c...

Despite the widespread use of stable isotopes in studies of avian movement, key assumptions on which the methodology is based remain unsubstantiated, including the assumption that measurements of stable hydrogen isotopes in feathers (delta D(f)) are consistent across time within the same laboratory or among laboratories using the same analytical pr...

Using cameras at artificial ground nests we found no major quantitative differences in species richness or the relative abundance of nest predators photographed in farm/ forest edge and forest-interior sites at five locations in eastern Pennsylvania. Raccoons (Procyan lotor) were the most commonly photographed visitors to nests at both farm/forest...

Artificial nests frequently are used to assess levels and patterns of nest pre-dation, but how well these nests measure rates of predation or trends in predation rates at real nests is unclear. We compared predation rates between 58 active Wood Thrush (Hylo-cichla mustelina) nests paired with 58 artificial nests designed to resemble Wood Thrush nes...

We used hourly counts of Red tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) migrating at Hawk Mountain during the autumns of 1992, 1993, and 1994, to examine the possibility that the extent to which time of day and local weather parameters affected the numbers of birds seen at the site varied over the course of autumn migration. Data were analyzed separately for...

We examined contaminant levels in tissue samples of sharp-shinned hawks (Accipiter striatus) collected in the eastern U.S. from 1991-93. We report concentrations of aldrin, cis-nonachlor, p,p′-DDE, dieldrin, heptachlor epoxide, mirex, oxychlordane, PCB, aluminum, lead, and mercury detected in 23 blood, 10 brain, and 31 liver samples. DDE, PCB's, an...

ABsTRAcr.--Cold-front passage has long been associated with south-bound raptor migration in northeastern North America. We used Hawk Mountain Sanctuary's 55-year database to calculate abundance indices of 14 raptor species at the site. These indices, together with data taken from coincidental U.S. Department of Commerce daily weather maps, were use...

Each fall, migrating Sharp-shinned Hawks (Accipiter striatus) are counted at traditional raptor-migration watch sites in eastern North America. During the 1980s and early 1990s, declines in the numbers of Sharp-shinned Hawks sighted at many of these sites raised concerns about the population status of the species. Using count data from Hawk Mountai...

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Pennsylvania, USA, has used the spectacle of raptor migration to help protect populations of hawks and eagles in NE North America for more than 50 yr. Historically, efforts like Hawk Mountain's have focused on single sites. Today, however, many threats facing migrating hawks and eagles are international, rather than local i...

Declines of many forest-dwelling Neotropical migrants have been attributed, in part, to fragmentation of forest habitat on the breeding grounds in North America. During 1990-1991, we determined reproductive success of Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) nest- ing within contiguous forest habitat (> 10,000 ha) and in nine forest fragments ranging i...

ABSTRACr.--Counts of migrating hawks were initiated in 1934 at Hawk Mountain and, except for 1943-1945, have continued to the present. We analyzed the data from 1934-1986 by a standardized sample period appropriate for each species. Counts of several species known to be susceptible to detrimental effects of organochlorine pesticides crashed between...

ABSTlCT.--Bimodal migration patterns occur in many raptor species but have not been conclusively documented for American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) along their Appalachian migration route. Kestrels migrating past Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Pennsylvania had a bimodal fall migration pattern when data were averaged over a 26-year period (1963-1988). Pe...

Typescript. "Graduate Program in Ecology." Thesis (M. Sc.)--Rutgers University, 1982. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-100).

Millions of raptors and other Neotropical migratory birds are constrained to a narrow geo- graphic corridor during migration through Veracruz, México. Over many years of work, a clearly identifi ed list of problems has defi ned the agenda of a long-term conservation plan for this glob- ally important migration stopover site. Threats to migrants inc...

Hourly counts of migrating raptors have been collected for ≥10 years at >20 raptor migration watchsites in eastern North America. Using counts from seven watch sites with ≤30 years of counts, we calculated annual population indexes for 16 species of diurnal migrant raptors. The seven watchsites were at similar latitudes along an east-to-west transe...

We estimated trends in autumn counts of migrating diurnal raptors collected at four watchsites around the Gulf of Mexico: Florida Keys Raptor Migration Project at Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys (1999-2005); Smith Point Raptor Migration Project and Corpus Christi Raptor Migration Project, Texas (1997-2005); and Veracruz River of Raptor...

We assessed the conservation status of 20 species of North American birds of prey by examining historical and recent estimates of trends in counts of raptors at migration watchsites. We compared these trend estimates with trends in Breeding Bird Surveys (BBSs), Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) (terms in italics are defi ned in the book's glossary), and...

Available information on the ecology of neotropical migrants during the winter season and especially dur- ing migration is far behind the existing knowledge of birds during the breeding season. This paper presents a stopover ecology case study. We document the occur- rence of species, outline the prevailing weather patterns during spring and fall m...