Hoy Audubon Society Program: Hawkwatching in Northeastern Illinois

Vic Berardi is the founder of the Illinois Beach State Park Hawkwatch which began in the year 2000 and will be celebrating its 25th consecutive year of fulltime raptor migration monitoring. Vic is a well recognized raptor photographer with many of his photos published in books and articles. Vic is also currently on the board of the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA) and serves as chair for the Winter Raptor Survey committee.

Vic’s presentation will include all the raptors regularly seen at the hawk watches in Northeastern Illinois during the fall migration period, including Illinois Beach State Park, Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve and the Greene Valley Forest Preserve and show comparisons amongst them. He will highlight favorable times of the fall for sightings of each species along with several of his photos describing them.  He will also include charts showing trends over the sites’ 24 years of data collecting and give some insight on why.