Copper Country Audubon

Brockway Mountain hosts a major raptor migration every spring.  It's unique in North America in that it hosts a raptor migration that passes in two directions every day during that migration.   The first organized counts on Brockway were in 1976 by Frank Isaacs and Loree Hennigar.  

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In 2009 Skye Haas of Marquette approached Copper Country Audubon with the idea of combining the efforts of the Laughing Whitefish Audubon Society and CCA to organize, fund and run a paid three month spring raptor count on Brockway.   A steering committee of two persons from each club was formed and we moved forward.  From CCA,  Zach Gayk and Joseph Youngman were picked and Laughing Whitefish picked Skye Haas and Greg Cleary.    We ran the count under the name "Keweenaw Raptor Survey".   We ran the count from 2010 through 2012 with Max Henschell and Arthur Green as our counters.  The count started on 15 March and ran through 15 June each spring.  Due to the heavy snows of the Keweenaw, the counter often rode a snowmobile to the count site till the end of April.

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K.R.S ran its course and no plans were in place to continue the counts on Brockway.   At that time Karen Karl, Deb Mues, Hannah Rooks and Bill Degowski were determined that the Brockway counts continue and they formed the Keweenaw Bird Research Group to continue the counts.   Since 2012 CCA has given a couple thousand dollars each year to KBRG to help fund the Brockway count.  

  A link to the Brockway website is here ---

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Below are links to the annual counter's reports for the three years of K.R.S. and the first three years of

the Brockway count under K.B.R.G.