Welcome back to the raptor banding blog! We finally had a good stretch of weather and were uninterrupted in the blind this week. We caught 25 new birds so let’s take a peek at some of the highlights!
This was a good week for Red-tailed Hawks (RTHA) and Sharp-shinned Hawks (SSHA) with 15 and 7 captures, respectively. One morning Nick caught a SSHA while I was banding a RTHA and we snapped a photo of them side by side since we had them at the same time. It’s fun to have a comparison of the smallest hawk we catch next to one of the biggest hawks we catch.
Another SSHA we caught was in the middle of molting a lot of it’s flight feathers. It had already dropped a fair number of feathers and was still in the early stages of growing new ones in. With so many feathers missing it looked pretty wild and it was cool to see it still flying really well.
This week brought 2 more Coopers Hawks (COHA) which was fun after a (so far) slow season for them. Today’s COHA was a nice adult male which was a nice change since most of the accipiters we have been catching recently have been juvenile birds.
Two more transmitters were deployed on RTHAs this week – one on a nice male and another on a female. The female that received a transmitter today was the biggest RTHA we’ve caught so far this season. She weighed just shy of 1300 grams and had impressively large legs and feet. It was cool to see such a large bird and it will be interesting to track her movements during this breeding season.
A big highlight for the week, and my personal favorite (don’t tell Nick I said that), was catching a Rough-legged Hawk (RLHA)!! This was the first RLHA caught at this station in 3 years and it was a gorgeous young female. An interesting adaption of the RLHA is that it grows feathers on it’s entire leg, all the way to the foot. This trait is necessary for their life in the arctic where it is often very cold and the extra insulation is helpful.
One of Nick’s collaborators is Neil Paprocki who is researching RLHA migration. Neil gave us a couple transmitters to deploy on RLHA so he can collect data from the hawks that move through the straits. It was exciting to finally put one out after waiting 3 years!
Season numbers: Total – 104 RTHA- 49 SSHA – 39 NOHA – 4 RSHA – 3 AMKE – 2 MERL – 1 COHA – 3 AGOS – 1 RLHA -1
Thank you for following along and stay tuned for next weeks update!
