It is snowing at home as we prepare to take off for our survey. Not a good sign! However, upon checking the WSDOT road cams, the weather looks relatively clear where we are headed. So we decide to set off and hope for the best.

We arrive at the beginning point of today’s route at approximately 9:15 AM. There are very high clouds and it’s 32°F outside. But, it’s not snowing!  And the visibility is not bad.

As we drive each survey, we enter information on a survey form that was created by Jeff Fleischer, the project developer. This form records the date, time, weather, survey miles, and route segments. The Coulee City route of 80 miles is divided into 15 separate segments. On each segment we mark down the number of each raptor species that we observe. 

Today, as we head up the coulee, driving north from Soap Lake, we observe Red-tail hawks and one, lone hawk flying high above us, too high to identify, other than the fact that it’s a member of the genus Buteo.

As we approach Park Lake, which is on the south end of Sun Lakes State Park, we observe two Golden Eagles soaring above the basalt. We stop and watch them for a while. They are magnificent!

Arriving at the conjunction with State Highway 2, we head east, go past the town of Coulee City, and on east to the town of Hartline. 

Going south from Hartline we make a big, angular, figure 8, driving through miles of farmland, back through Coulee City, and down along Pinto Ridge. Even though we have the route form and our route map, we miss the turn off for two segments. After driving past terrain that we don’t remember from last month, we realize we’ve gone too far, and have to turn around. We backtrack and get on the right road again.

This is a new route for us, the second time we’ve driven it. I think next month we’ll have it down… Unless it snows 3 feet and we find that we have to change things! One advantage of the other two routes we drive is that we have driven them for the past two years, so we are familiar with whether the roads are actually plowed (like the county map says) when it snows. We know where we can go. This route, being new, still has opportunity for discoveries after it snows.

Here is a summary of what we saw:

Red-tailed Hawk   5
American Kestrel   9
Northern Harrier   1
Golden Eagle  2
Rough-legged Hawk   5
Unidentified Buteo 1
Great-horned Owl  1

Would you like to inquire about participating in ECAS Winter Raptor Surveys?  Contact Jeff Fleischer at raptorrunner97321@yahoo.com