The Mount Zion Hawk Watch yesterday reached a major milestone we didn't dream of when we started on August 1st 2026 - we counted the 2000th migrant this fall migration. It was a male American Kestrel going Southwest, appropriately found in the eponymous Kestrel Channel below and east of the watch.
2 years ago when we found the spot and designated the site as a hawk watch with the Hawk Migration Association (formerly named HMANA the Hawk Migration Association of North America) we counted at this site only on days when we thought there would be a good flight, and we had had 576 migrants then.
Why the difference? You may well ask.
For one thing, we counted almost every day this season. When we started the count we were very conservative about hawks seen over Lookout Mountain and disappearing behind the trees over the ridge, we would count them as non-migrants. After all, there was no one to give us guidance, since no one had counted here or Dinosaur Ridge in fall before.
My guess is when they first thought of a hawk watch in the Denver area, since most of the hawk watches in the country are in fall and very few are in spring, someone must have done an exploratory count at Dinosaur Ridge for one or two full seasons and decided that the numbers were not worth pursuing a fall hawk count, but we have no documentation of any of their efforts.
Fortuitously, on August 21st we could not go up Lookout Mountain Road in either direction to the hawk watch as they had the annual Rock Hike for the School of Mines for the newly entering freshman when each of them carries a 10 lb rock from their hometown to deposit around the big M on the northeast face of Mount Zion, so we counted instead at the Buffalo Bill Museum on top of Lookout Mountain, where we had a good view both north as well as South. We were flabbergasted to find that most of the hawks which were soaring a little over the ridge were actually migrants! They would come up from the north and immediately go south over Lookout Mountain. That's why they would disappear behind the trees. They were migrating. This changed our perspective for counting from Mount Zion. Looking back at our numbers earlier in the month we had as many as 10 to 17 Red Tails and Turkey Vultures which is certainly not the case in retrospect.
If you go to
https://hawkcount.org/month_summary.php?rsite=968&ryear=2026&rmonth=08
You can see the big jump in numbers from the 21st August onward. Our attitude now is diametrically the opposite of where we started. We now consider every hawk a potential migrant unless we can prove otherwise.
We counted:
Turkey Vulture 270
Osprey. 30
Bald Eagle. 8
Northern Harrier. 31
Sharp-shinned Hawk 52
Cooper's Hawk. 296
Broad-winged Hawk 109
Red-tailed Hawk. 774
Swainson's Hawk. 194
Ferruginous Hawk. 3
American Kestrel. 156
Merlin. 7
Peregrine Falcon. 1
Prairie Falcon. 2
Unidentified accipiter 4
Unidentified buteo. 9
Unidentified raptor. 19
Total = 2005, as of yesterday 11/7/26
The only comparison we have to make is with the spring season at Dinosaur Ridge when volunteers like me were counting between 2017 and 2021 when their total numbers for the entire seasons were 692, 588, 828, 556, and 1101 respectively, even with excellent hawk watchers counting like Carol Cwiklinski and Steve Small.
Even comparing with the last 5 years Dinosaur Ridge in spring had paid professional counters, which is not a valid comparison as they were at least four decades younger with far better eyesight, and they counted 8 hours every day and 4 of the 5 years they had 2 professional counters with many volunteer hawk spotters - their numbers between 2022 and 2026 were not too much higher at 2406, 2321, 2150, 3144, and 2263 respectively.
The 194 Swainson's Hawk we counted the season is far higher than any count in Spring since 1990 at Dinosaur Ridge where their highest numbers were 75 in 1997, and 77 in 2023.
So also our 777 Red-tailed Hawk are higher than any number at Dinosaur Ridge since 2004 and 2005 when they had 708 and 724 respectively. Prior to that there were higher numbers, but there seemed to have been much larger numbers of all the different species counted at Dinosaur Ridge where seasonal numbers higher than 3000 were pretty routine.
We intend to continue until the hawks stop migrating.
Once the season is over, I will write up a final overview.
Anyone is welcome to come up, though the numbers are small near the end of the migration season. Golden Eagles are fairly reliable, with most days having between 1 and 8 sightings, though not of course guaranteed.
Ajit and Liza Antony, Zak Hepler and Steve Severs
Central Park, Dakota Ridge, Boulder.
Sent using myEarthLink
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