Welcome back to the spring raptor banding blog! There weren’t many raptors moving this week due to bad weather but we still had some exciting captures. At the beginning of the week we deployed another transmitter on a Red-tailed Hawk (RTHA) and we’ve been monitoring her movements all week. Right after we tagged her, she went south to Cadillac and has been hanging around in the same area for the last few days. We’re excited to see where she spends her summer.
This week brought a season first for us – American Goshawk (AGOS)! We caught a young male that was being very vocal. After we banded and released him, he perched in a tree and watched us for awhile. It was fun to get such a good, close look at a bird that spends much of their time in the forest.
A young, male American Goshawk.
Most of the RTHA’s that we’ve been catching lately are juvenile birds and this week we’ve noticed that some of them are beginning to molt in adult feathers. One RTHA in particular had a new tail feather growing in. As feathers grow in, they are encased in a sheath that protects them until they fully grown. During this stage the feathers are very sensitive, so we were careful to not disturb it. The feather we found was just beginning to emerge from it’s sheath.
Another fun capture we had was a Sharp-Shinned Hawk (SSHA) with a full crop. A crop serves as a temporary food storage for birds and helps soften the food before it passes through to the stomach. When a bird has a crop full of food it bulges out and is easy for us to observe. The SSHA we caught must’ve recently eaten a sparrow-sized bird with how full it’s crop was.
Season numbers so far: Total – 79 RTHA – 34 SSHA – 32 NOHA – 4 RSHA – 3 AMKE – 2 MERL – 1 COHA – 1 AGOS – 1
