Cruising through Harrier Heights
Our North Cascades Audubon winter raptor surveys have yielded less birds this season than in past years. I am sure that one reason for this is the weather, which up on the Waterville Plateau, has been less than agreeable. So many times there has been an abundance of heavy fog. Because of the fog, we’ve made multiple trips to our survey routes, hoping to get enough visibility to actually count raptors.
We make a habit of looking at the WSDOT road cameras at Waterville and Sims corner before we leave. Those are the only cameras that are available to help us get some idea of what the weather is like 60 miles from where we live. So often the weather will be clear here in Wenatchee, even clear all the way to Moses Coulee, or Withrow. But then the fog rolls in and stays, and stays, and stays. When we can’t see a thing, we turn around and go home to wait for another day.
There have definitely been less birds this year and last year than in previous years. After we complete our final surveys next month, I’m going to draw up a spreadsheet with a chart to compare the number of raptors we have seen across the seven years this project has existed here in our part of the state.
This morning, we started out not seeing very much. We had traveled 36 miles on our route (96 miles from home) before we saw our first bird, an American Kestrel. Then, within a quarter mile we spotted a Rough-legged Hawk. After that…nothing. For ten more miles. We wondered if this was going to be a “Two-bird day.“
However, once we got west of Saint Andrews Road, the Northern Harriers came out to play, or rather to hunt. The further we drove, the more we saw and our spirits began to lift. Before we finished our route we had counted EIGHT Northern Harriers, five males and three females.
That made us feel a little better.
Today’s survey:
American Kestrel (AMKE) 3
Northern Harrier (NOHA) 8
Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA) 2