On May 19, 2025, the Glacier National Park entrance sign was spotted. (Micah Drew/Montana Daily)
GLACIER PARK NATIONAL On August 26 and September 22, Glacier National Park will have volunteer training for its yearly Hawk Watch Program. In a news release, the park provided the following information:
The August 26 training session will take place in the Community Building at West Glacier from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. At the Lake McDonald and Mount Brown Hawk Watch locations in September and October, volunteers will receive comprehensive training on raptors’ ecology, identification, and migration. They will also learn how to perform migration counts.
Alongside professional raptor migration counters, volunteers can go to an observation site and count raptors as they migrate just below Mount Brown Lookout. This hike has an elevation gain of almost 4,000 feet and is roughly 4.5 miles one way (or 9 miles round trip).
Volunteers interested in taking part in the Lake McDonald Lodge Hawk Watch in late September or early October will have the opportunity to practice in the field on September 22. This field training will be held in the parking lot of Jammer Joe’s next to Lake McDonald Lodge from noon to four o’clock.
In order to become a member of the Hawk Watch Team, individuals will get instruction from park biologists on how to recognize and count raptors that migrate. Park biologists will respond to inquiries and provide information regarding the importance of raptors to our ecosystems, the threats they face, and the reasons behind Glacier’s establishment of the Mount Brown Hawk Watch Program.
For further information, volunteers who would want to sign up for one or both training days may send an email to the Glacier Citizen Science Office at [email protected].
Golden Eagles move to warmer climates each fall from their breeding habitats in the north. According to the park, Glacier National Park is directly traversed by one of the most significant golden eagle migration routes in North America. During the fall and spring, this migration corridor is also used by a large number of other raptors.
According to Glacier, biologists recorded about 2,000 golden eagles passing Mount Brown each year in the mid-1990s, but more recent data shows that the population of golden eagles has significantly decreased.
As part of a global initiative to use systematic migrating raptor counts to assess long-term raptor population changes, the park launched a Raptor Migration Project in 2011 to explore potential sites for a Hawk Watch site in response to this issue, according to Glacier. Along with meteorological and environmental factors, observers also document raptors’ sex, age, color morph, and behavior.
According to the Raptor Migration Database, watchers on Mount Brown recorded 1,782 golden eagles and 2,741 raptors transiting the observation post in 2024.
To view a global map of Hawk Watch locations, visit www.hawkcount.org.
