The Bus Has Not Yet Arrived!
This past week, Amanda and I drove our first Winter Raptor Survey for the East Cascades Audubon Society. We actually made a trip earlier in the month to scope out the roads and see about some re-routing options for when road segments might be impassable due to mud or snow.
Last winter, we encountered roads with mud that was too deep to drive through, or snow that hadn’t been plowed. We do utilize the Douglas County Snow Plow Map to determine which roads are plowed and should be drivable. But, that doesn’t account for mud. Last year we did a lot of navigating around mud and we wanted to create a map that would be accurate. So we headed up to the plateau and made a new map with mud/snow modifications. In the map above, the magenta sections were not drivable and the dotted red lines were where we re-routed.
This last week, we drove our first official Waterville NE survey route, and saw very little. We were very surprised to only see four Red-tailed hawks and one American Kestrel! Not one Rough-legged hawk in sight – at least not yet. These hawks migrate south from the Arctic in the Fall.
Last year, on November 2, we saw thirteen Rough-leggeds! In fact, in that survey last November, we saw a total of 27 raptors! This year we saw five. That is why we decided that the migration bus from the far north has not yet arrived. We have two more routes to drive this month, and are hoping more will have arrived by then.