Is anyone else having hawk problems? I'm assuming this is the season for them. I live in Pennsylvania and I noticed around this time of year hawks are EVERYWHERE....
A quick glance at the area of South East Pennsylvania close to Allentown will show a ridge that sits at 90 degrees to the rest of the Appalachian Mountains, Its called "Hawk Mountain"
Its position relative to the prevailing winds makes this a great place for a hawk to catch an updraft and soar to high altitude with little or no effort, then glide for great distances.
Presciently hawks are pairing up for the breeding season and just like with roosters and hens or men and women the smaller male hawk engages in feeding behavior to impress his perspective mate with his hunting powers. It's the hawk equivalent of a Platinum Master card. So chicken killing is in overdrive now because natural prey is becoming scarcer while natural hawk hormones are raging.
From that Wikipedia thingy: In 1929, the
Pennsylvania Game Commission offered hunters $5 for every
goshawk shot during migrating season,
[5] as the birds were considered pests. In 1932,
Richard Pough (a birder and photographer from Philadelphia) photographed hundreds of killed hawks and published these photos in
Bird Lore, the predecessor to
Audubon.
[5] Thanks largely to the publicity brought by Pough's photographs, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was incorporated in 1938, and in 1946 began year-round operations.
[5] The Game Commission bounty was terminated in 1951, although birds of prey continued to face threats, including from chemical pesticides like
DDT. Bird counts have been taken at Hawk Mountain since the end of World War II, with the Sanctuary counting its
millionth raptor on October 8, 1992 [Wow, that was 23 years ago so tell me again how depressed the nor fish eating raptor population was] 
