Holiday Beach a hawk haven, says nature magazine

A prominent nature magazine ranks a beach in Essex Countyas one of the best places in North America to watch hawks.

Audubon Magazine, which reaches nearly 2 million subscribers, ranks Amherstburg's Holiday Beach No. 3 onits top-10 list.

Holiday Beach is just east of Windsor, Ont. Kevin Money is the director of conservation areas for the Essex Regional Conservation Association.

"This is a great opportunity for us to try to promote Holiday Beach in terms of the whole hawk migration and just in teaching people about the natural environment in general," Money said. "To be No. 3 is actually quite an honour."

Thousands of hawks fly over and throughHoliday Beacheach year as they migrate south.

"The whole reason we have a three-storey viewing tower there is because we know the hawks fly,"Money said. "So we built infrastructure around that to draw people in to allow them to watch that."

Holiday Beach is the only Canadian location featured in the list, which includes places as far south as Panama.

On its website,the beach lists 22 different speciesof birds of prey that visit the park:

• Turkey Vulture
• Osprey
• Northern Goshawk
• Sharp-shinned Hawk
• Cooper's Hawk
• Red-tailed Hawk
• Red-shouldered Hawk
• Broad-winged Hawk
• Swainson's Hawk
• Rough-legged Hawk
• Northern Harrier
• Merlin
• American Kestrel
• Peregrine Falcon
• Bald Eagle
• Golden Eagle
• Black Vulture
• Swallow-tailed Kite
• Prairie Falcon
• Gyrfalcon
• Mississippi Kite
• Ferruginous Hawk