“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