This was a day for sighting Falcons!
My house was engulfed in fog this morning, but a look at the WADOT cameras showed clear skies up on the plateau. Sure enough, as we headed up Pine Canyon, the skies cleared and it turned into a beautiful day. This morning, we are three. A friend, Joanne, wanted to ride along, as she is interested in learning more about birding, and we were glad to have an extra pair of eyes.
We arrived in Waterville and, or course, had to make a stop at the Highway 2 Brew for a Chai tea before we headed east on highway 2. Our route begins at the Highland School House, which is 64 miles from home. The total drive miles on the survey route are 112. We stop to record the time and weather, zero out the odometer to check the miles and turn on the tracking app on my iPhone. We are using a tracking app to record the route, in the hopes of helping to create a database of digital maps for all of the routes in the project. Here’s a photo of our beautiful, clear, day at the school house.
The first part of the route goes south from the Highland School and makes a large loop which ends up back on Highway 2. Usually this segment doesn’t yield a great number of birds, but today we see three American Kestrels and one Northern Harrier.
Back on Highway 2, we head east to Atkins Lake. This is the area where we usually see the Snowy Owls after the first of the year. Atkins Lake is kind of a misnomer – at least, this year. In years past there has been water in the lake bed – teaming with waterfowl in the spring through fall. But this past year was so dry and hot, it all evaporated and there is no water at all. Likewise with the Vernal Ponds which are a little ways north, and further along on the route, there are no ponds this year. We are hoping for LOTS of snow this winter.
About halfway through the route, I take a look at the tracking app on my phone and discover that it is not turned on. I would swear in a court of law that I had turned it on at the beginning, but it’s not on now. So, I guess we won’t track this route until we drive it again in December.
Our route winds around east and then north to Saint Andrews, which was almost totally destroyed in the fires last September. St. Andrews Lake is not much of a lake this winter. We keep winding around up to the Vernal Ponds on Heritage Rd (Rd. L NE), and, there are no ponds. This year we decided to change the place where we eat our lunch. In the past we have stopped and eaten SE of Sims Corner. But in the 10 lunches we have eaten at that spot in the past two years, we have never seen any raptors. So, we decided to stop at the Vernal Ponds and eat, hoping we might spot something. And, we did! We saw a male and female Northern Harrier and a Rough-legged Hawk. I don’t think we would have spotted any of them, if we were just driving through.
We encountered a surprising number of raptors today, I think the highest count we have ever seen on this route. We saw 11 American Kestrels, 15 Rough-legged Hawks and FOUR Prairie Falcons! That’s a good count! Besides the raptors, we saw multiple Ravens, a Northern Shrike, three pheasants and 61 mule deer.
Here is a summary of what we saw:
Red-tailed Hawk 2
American Kestrel 11
Northern Harrier 6
Rough-legged Hawk 15
Prairie Falcon 4
Would you like to inquire about participating in ECAS Winter Raptor Surveys? Contact Jeff Fleischer at raptorrunner97321@yahoo.com