Here’s something we did not experience this survey season… fog. 

When we started driving the Winter Raptor surveys in 2019, we ran two surveys each month, March through November, for a total of ten surveys per season. Occasionally, we would head out to drive towards the start of our survey route, only to find when we got there, or even before, that the fog was so thick we couldn’t see across the road.  Much less see any raptors (See photo above from a previous year).

This year, we added an additional route, for a total of 15 separate surveys for the season, and did not once encounter fog! Yippee! That made us very happy! Rather surprised… but very happy. There’s nothing like driving 60 miles to the start of your route only to find you can’t see across the road and have to go back home to try it another day. We are very thankful that did not happen this year!

This was the last survey for the 2021/2022 winter survey season. It’s obvious that the seasons are changing. The small islands located in the Grand Coulee lake chain are covered with gulls.

The snow is gone, the hills are turning green, the birds are providing aerial acrobatics, and we found only one Rough-legged Hawk. 

Highway 17 going north through Grand Coulee saw a lot more activity than in previous trips, and that included vehicular traffic! Everyone was on the road, and everyone was in a hurry! Fortunately, the road through the Coulee has lots of pull outs and places you can stop. I think we used them all.

Between SR 17 and US 2, we saw eight Red-tailed Hawks, six of them in pairs.  At the north end of Soap Lake we saw a pair of Falcons flipping and turning high above us. They were too fast to get a picture or a good enough look to positively identify them. But they definitely had the angular, pointed wings and checkerboard underwings of a member of the falcon family. Along Park Lake an adult Bald Eagle watched our every move.

As we headed east across the Dry Falls Dam, we were surprised to still see ice along the edges of Banks Lake. We found a funny Canada Goose stepping along the ice like he was afraid of falling.

The last 30 miles south of Hartline yielded zero birds. It’s what seems like endless miles of agricultural land. No trees. No grassland. No shrubbery. And no birds. Even sitting and watching the trees and equipment surrounding the occasional farmyards for a length of time, didn’t yield any resident raptors. We were hoping for maybe a Kestrel or two. If they were there, they didn’t show.

We did drive close to the abandoned farm that is a couple miles south of Highway 2, looking for the Great Horned Owls that nest there. We know they are there, but since we didn’t actually see them this time, we couldn’t count them.

This wraps it up for the 2021/2022 winter raptor survey season for us. There are still routes available if you are interested in participating next season. For information, contact Jeff Fleischer at raptorrunner97321@yahoo.com

Here is a summary of what was seen:

Red-tailed Hawk 10
American Kestrel 1
Northern Harrier 1
Bald Eagle – Adult 1
Rough-legged Hawk 1
Unidentified Buteo 1
Unidentified Falcon 2

Winter has definitely left the building.

Spring is assuredly on the way and the snow is gone. The Red-winged Blackbirds and Meadow Larks have arrived.  However, Penny Lake is still covered in ice, although it is thinning. Where Foster Creek runs into Penny Lake there are probably 200 to 300 Northern Pintails sitting, waiting for the lake to open. Among all of the Pintails, I spotted two Tundra Swans, easily identified by the yellow spot at the base of the bill, beneath the eye. Likewise, Bennett Lake is still frozen over, except for the northern end where the ice has melted. It also has good sized population of ducks, but they were too far away for me to identify.

I hoped to see the Golden Eagle that nests in the basalt cliffs behind Bennett Lake, but it didn’t show today. I was looking along the cave like openings in the basalt and thought I saw a Falcon sitting in one of the caves! I snapped some pictures with my camera, but when I got home and looked at them I could see it was just another “hawk rock,” though I suppose in this case it would have to be called a “falcon rock.”

The number and variety of raptors certainly does change from month to month. On today’s survey there was only one Red-tailed Hawk, and one male Northern Harrier. I thought perhaps all of the Rough-legged Hawks would have left for their northern breeding grounds, but there were still five on the first part of the route. 

This seemed to be a day for Falcons, five and all! Heading north along Road H up to Highway 17 there were two Prairie Falcons doing aerial acrobatics in the air. And then coming back to Mansfield, a pair of American Kestrels were hanging out by the cemetery. I had stopped there to eat my lunch and hoped something would fly in.  Sure enough, here came two American Kestrels, one with his lunch in his mouth! A tasty mouse (See photo at top of blog).  Or I’m sure he felt it was tasty!

Leaving Mansfield once again, the Merlin showed up flying toward the school. I would love to get a picture of him, but he is just too fast!

A summary of what was seen today:
Red-tailed Hawk. 1
American Kestrel. 2
Northern Harrier. 1
Rough-legged Hawk. 5
Prairie Falcon. 2
Merlin. 1

“What are you troublemakers up to?” 

We were sitting on the road beneath the Hawk Rock (see Dry Falls Junction blog from January 2022) discussing field marks on a certain bird we had seen. A pick up truck pulled up behind us, and a good sized farmer got out and headed straight toward us. Fortunately, his question was accompanied with a big smile, so it didn’t alarm us. 

We told him that we were doing winter raptor surveys for Audubon and he said, “Oh, I’ve seen you before up here! Yes, we’ve talked before!” He asked us if we were looking for Snow Buntings! Well, they certainly are winter birds, but not in the raptor family. So we chatted a little bit about what we were looking for and he informed us that he has a family of Great Horned Owls nesting in some big trees back by his house. He said they had been there three years. I wasn’t quite brave enough to ask him if we could trespass on his property to look for the owls. Maybe another time.

Our encounter with him reminded me of some other folks we have met on our surveys. These are people whom we see just about every time. After the first encounter, they usually wave and smile.  We have only met one person who was not friendly. And that was actually before we started doing these winter surveys. 

The unfriendly person was actually quite justified in being unfriendly. We were on the eastern part of the plateau the year there were seven Snowy Owls that showed up. News of the large number of owls hit the airwaves and some folks from Seattle came over and were very disrespectful to the farmers’ property. They even drove through the fields! So I can’t blame the woman when she came out and yelled at people and told them to leave. Fortunately, most birders respect private property and stay on the county roads.

One man we see just about every time lives out at the end of Penny Lake. He talks to us about the snow, the raptors he notices around his property, his cattle, the summer waterfowl on the lake, and the abandoned buildings out on the hillsides. We, in turn, talk about the raptors we have seen, the changes in numbers, also the coyotes and the deer. The numbers in coyote and deer are very minimal this month.  We saw one coyote and five mule deer.

One woman who lives on a farm north of Mansfield came out to check on us one day as we were in the car eating our lunch on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. She could see us from her farmhouse and came out to see who we were. We explained what we were doing, and she could see that we were harmless. She explained that she was checking because there were some people further up the road who had been stealing things from local farms, so she was on the alert. I told her she would see us every month from November to March.  We have seen her in subsequent surveys and she smiles and waves at us.

The weather was beautiful for today’s survey! The sun was shining and it actually got to 55°F. We were very pleased to see water on the west side of Rd. L NE, by Atkins Lake. It was loaded with Northern Pintails and seventeen Tundra Swans.

Atkins Lake, itself, has no water this year. The Vernal Ponds also have no water.

But, St. Andrews has a little, all the way up to the road.   It would be so good if it stayed there!

We did see a fair amount of Rough-legged hawks and Red-tailed hawks today, and three Northern Harriers, which had been absent on some previous surveys. But we did not see one American Kestrel, Merlin, or any Prairie Falcons.

Here is a summary of what was seen today.
Red-tailed Hawks         8
Northern Harriers         3
Rough-legged Hawks   5

This will be the last Winter Raptor Survey for Dry Falls Junction route until November of this year.  If you would like to inquire about participating in ECAS Winter Raptor Surveys, contact Jeff Fleischer at raptorrunner97321@yahoo.com