The 2017 Count Team

From left to right: Marc Kramer, Jesse Amesbury and Kenny Fowler.

September is finally here! We welcome our team of counters for the 2017 season. They will be conducting daily counts of all avian species at Long Key State Park and Curry Hammock State Park – both located in the Middle Keys of Florida – from September 2 through October 31. The counts at Long Key are conducted starting day break, when the park is still closed, along a 3-mile tract that covers four habitats distinctive of the Keys – mangrove forest, coastal berm, salt pan and hardwood hammock. The hawkwatch at Curry Hammock is open to visitors and is conducted daily -rain or shine – from 9am to (at minimum) 4pm. Ask the park rangers at the front booth how to get to the count deck when entering the state park.

Kenny Fowler was one of our official hawkwatchers at FKH during the 2016 season, and we are very fortunate to have him back for the fall of 2017. With his guidance we will have a smooth start to the season and maintain a consistent pace throughout. He has been a hawk counter at Bake Oven Knob, Pennsylvania, and is familiar with our project’s mission and HMANA protocols. He has also been an intern at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, has worked on migratory shorebirds, and has worked from North Dakota to the East Coast. His studies have taken him as far as South Africa. He is based out of Quakertown, PA.

Jesse Amesbury was an interpretive naturalist for the Cape May Bird Observatory during the fall of 2016. During that period he interacted with hundreds of visitors at the hawkwatch, gave weekly presentations about hawk identification, assisted with official counts, participated at the Higbee Beach Morning Flight Platform, and conducted Master Seawatch Identification Workshops at the Avalon Seawatch. His work experience includes monitoring for Black Rails and American Black Ducks, tour guiding, habitat restoration, and eBird reviewing.

Marc Kramer has lived in South Florida for the last decade. Since 2013, he has been one of the bird banders at the Cape Florida Banding Station in Key Biscayne. His field work and enthusiasm for birds have given him the opportunity to travel throughout the U.S., Central and South America, the Caribbean and Asia. He has worked as field biologist in Panama researching jaçanas, in Nevada with breeding shorebirds, and in Alaska with seabirds. He is a veterinarian by profession, and is founder of his own non-profit organization, Project PetSnip, for which he has operated on more than 40,000 animals.

Come visit us at the hawkwatch – Curry Hammock State Park. We have a new much larger deck. You can find our latest raptor count number on HawkCount.org.