We conducted a new survey route we created this winter season to add to the 3 surveys we did in 2022-2023 when we moved from New York to Denver. This one went from Bennett to Jackson Lake taking local mainly dirt roads. We completed this route in December 2023 and January 2024, doing the last one for the season for February yesterday.
We saw 54 raptors for the day over 6.75 hours and driving 129 miles:
1 immature Rough-legged Hawk – the only one we've seen this winter,
4 Prairie Falcon including 1 adult which was near enough to age,
4 Prairie (Richardson's) Merlin including 1 adult male with beautiful blue wings in the same tree we saw in December!
3 Ferruginous Hawk – 2 of which were adult,
6 Northern Harrier including 2 adult male,
5 adult Bald Eagle,
7 Red-tailed hawks including one Harlan's Hawk immature light morph, and
25 American Kestrel adults of both sexes.
This was higher than the 41 raptors we saw on January 2, 2024 (when we had of note 1 Prairie Falcon, 1 Prairie Merlin, 1 Golden Eagle and 3 Ferruginous Hawk), and the 32 we saw on December 9, 2023 (which included 2 Ferruginous Hawk and 1 Prairie Merlin).
You can see all these results at the HMANA Winter Raptor Survey (WRS) website at https://wrs.hmana.org/public_html/index.php where you can see the results for Colorado as well as the rest of the country.
You can get general information about the voluntary WRS program at https://www.hmana.org/winter-raptor-survey/
Regarding the paucity of Rough-legged Hawk seen this winter season, we were at Saks-Zim Bog in Minnesota in January when we saw 20-25 RLHA over 2 days including many dark morphs, and our local guide told us that normally at that time of the year there are usually no Rough-legs to be seen there, but because of the very mild winter, they were still being sighted.
There was a HMANA Winter Raptor Survey done in South Dakota which is a little south of Saks-Zim Bog (roughly 200 miles) on February 11, 2024 which had a spectacular 44 light morph Rough-legs. The same survey route done on January 14, 2023 had yielded only 3 RLHA, and on January 26, 2022 had reported only 3 RLHA by the same observers, so they seem to be wintering further north this year.
Ajit and Liza Antony
Central Park which used to be Stapleton, Denver, Colorado
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