Welcome back to the blog! This past week we’ve seen a decrease in the number of raptors moving through the area but we still had some cool captures! At this point in the season, most of the raptors we are catching are juvenile birds that hatched just last year. A fair number of them have begun molting in their new adult feathers and it’s really neat to see them in this transitional stage. Let’s take a look at some of this weeks birds in molt!
These 2 Red-tailed Hawks (RTHA) were at various stages of molting in their new tail feathers. A young RTHA doesn’t have the classic “red tail” trait that makes them so easy to identify. It’s not until they survive a whole year that those red tail feathers grow in. The first bird pictured below has only molted 1 new feather in while the second has already molted over half of it’s tail!
We also caught our second Merlin (MERL) of the season this week and it was a young male. He was exhibiting molt on his back and head. As juveniles, these birds are more brown in color and adults are a striking blue. It was fun to see the contrast in color on this bird.
Another very exciting capture this week was our second Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA) after a 3 year hiatus of catching these at our site. Like our first RLHA, this one was also a juvenile female. We were able to deploy another GPS/GSM transmitter on this bird for one of our collaborators, Neil Paprocki. Below is a picture of how we fit these transmitters on the birds. I hold the bird in various positions while Nick makes sure the straps fit like a backpack on the bird. He takes great care to ensure the straps aren’t twisted and all the feather tracts are clear so nothing is getting tugged on uncomfortably. Once it’s all set, we take a few pictures of the bird with its new transmitter before sending it on its way!
This week brought another season first for us – a young, male Broad-winged Hawk (BWHA)! These hawks more commonly prefer reptiles, amphibians, and mammals but every once in awhile we get one interested in a bird and we get lucky enough to capture one. This may be the only one we’ve caught so far, but we’ve had a few close calls. On the same day we caught this young fella, an adult BWHA landed on a pole right above our setup and watched us for a minute before deciding something fishy was going on and taking off.
Our season is nearing the end so stay tuned to see how the last week goes and our final season totals!
Season numbers:
Total – 117 RTHA – 59 SSHA – 39 NOHA – 4 RSHA – 3 AMKE – 2 MERL – 2 COHA – 1 AGOS – 1 RLHA – 2 BWHA – 2
