[cobirds] Winter Raptor Survey for HMANA

This is our 3^rd season doing volunteer Winter Raptor Surveys (WRS) in Colorado for the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA), since moving to Denver from Cornwall, Orange County, New York. We had done 8 seasons in NY,  along 4 different routes.

We conducted our 2^nd Winter Raptor Survey of this winter season yesterday, going from Bennett to Jackson Lake on an all-day trip along small dirt roads, mainly. This route was begun only in December 2023, and we did it 3 times in December 2023, and January and February 2024.

We had the best numbers and quality along this route this time, with a total of 69 raptors including:

Prairie Falcon 5

Merlin 6

Ferruginous Hawk 4

Golden Eagle 1 adult

Sharp-shinned Hawk 1

Northern Harrier 3

Bald Eagle 2

American Kestrel 34

Red-tailed Hawk 13

 

Our 1^st WRS of this season was in South and East Boulder a week ago. I did not post the results on COBirds as there was nothing special we saw. We did see 60 raptors:

FH (Ferruginous Hawk) 3

AK (American Kestrel) 18

RT (Red-tailed Hawk)  32

BE (Bald Eagle) 6

NH (Northern Harrier) 1

 

Anyone can do a Winter Raptor Survey (WRS) for HMANA, if you know of an area which has wintering raptors, and you have reasonable raptor ID skills. As you do it, your skills will improve.

https://www.hmana.org/winter-raptor-survey/  is the official website with plenty of information on how to conduct a survey. You can do as little as one survey a year in January, or go whole-hog as we do, doing a survey in December, January, and February; and we do 4 different routes – which means we do one a week for the 3 months.

If you need help creating one, you can always count on me to come with you and help set up a route.

Robert Beauchamp has had a WRS along the Nunn Raptor Alley since 2022 after I posted our results, and had encouraged raptor enthusiasts to start their own WRS. He did his 1^st WRs of the season, also yesterday, and you can read his report, as well as ours at https://wrs.hmana.org/public_html/index.php  where you can find reports of every WRS in the country on the main page.

If you want to find WRSs in other states, go to the left sidebar, and click on Survey Map, zoom in and click on the WRS you want.

This is a good way of finding raptors if you're interested in going and looking for them. If you don't have a WRS, you can only see the general area the raptors were seen. Since I have a WRS, I can see specific details of when, and where specifically, a particular raptor was seen on anyone's WRS.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Ajit and Liza Antony

Central Park, Colorado

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