End of year post to kick start new year

Well, I didn't end up following through with this one, but am rededicating myself to trying it again and focusing on shorter posts as I see birds or interesting items.  This time of year is always motivating for "raptoring" between a coming new year on the heels of the football season winding down, not to mention the growing number of Ferruginous, Rough-legged and Baldie sightings.  I will also be leading an after school "Birds of Prey" class at school in January and February.

I haven't taken much of a driving tour yet, but I did see my first rough-legged hawk of the season on 287 last week. From the variety of post on various sites on the internet, it sounds like the Roughies are out in abundance this year, although the Ferruginous are still fairly infrequent.
The Red Tail Hawks appear to be guarding their nest East of Rothman Open Space, although I haven't seen them actually on or working on the nest yet.   I am starting to scope out other nest sites as I drive and noticed a Red Tail sitting on a nest at Flatirons Golf Course, near the Northwest corner and easily visible from the car on Arapahoe.
I have seen a few Harriers around Rothman and have seen a GHO a few times, plus there were a few Bald Eagles hanging out on Lookout Road when I drove back from Boulder last week.

However, the best sighting of the winter so far was on the Pearl Street Mall where we happened upon a crowd staring up into the trees and sure enough, there was a fairly large hawk feasting upon a pigeon.  You could see the red flesh in his talons and downy feathers were floating around as if someone had just finished a pillow fight.  At first I got a little excited and thought it might be a young Northern Goshawk, which sometimes stray into town, but after a good look at the general coloration, belly markings, long tail and most importantly, square head, it was definitely a Cooper's and from the conversation among some in the crowd, a frequent visitor to the Pearl Street Pigeon Cafe.

Happy Raptoring!

Happy Raptoring in 2013!

I ended 2012 with a fabulous sighting right behind my house, then opened 2013 with a fruitful, spontaneous raptor count, both of which helped inspire actually starting this blog.

On December 29, while walking on the trail directly behind my house, I watched a Cooper’s hawk chase a Kestrel, then sit on a neighbor’s roof, before flying across the way and swooping right into a pine tree where it flushed a bunch of LBJs.  Meanwhile, the Kestrel was perched nearby, followed the Cooper’s and nabbed one of the LBJs for lunch.

On January 1, I drove to Erie to see a friend and casually looked for the large blobs as I always do and spotted quite a few birds, probably over twenty on the round trip, including a juvenile prairie falcon that landed on a roadside post, an eagle flying away from me, and a GHO sitting on a utility pole at Isabelle and Erie Parkway.

My January 2^nd morning walk today yielded a beautiful male Kestrel perched atop a tree, as well as a Red-tail Hawk preening its nest site (see next section).

Red-tail Nest:  Five or six years ago I originally stumbled upon a nest site of GHOs and monitored it throughout that year. The next January, however, I noticed a Red-tail at the same nest, preening it and preparing it.  The following day I returned with binoculars and was surprised to find a large GHO sitting on the nest where the RT had been the day before.  It had returned to claim its turf.

As I scanned the skies, I spied (assuming it was the) same RT, only about 150 yards away, building a new nest from scratch.  The pair finished the nest and (again, I assume it is the same pair) has returned each year since.  I usually first spot them around mid-January, but at least one and I think the pair (same one or different since it is so early?) has been readying the nest for another spring since at least Christmas.  Unfortunately, the GHO nest blew down that second year and although I still see and hear owls occasionally, I have not found another nest site and they have not been nearly as prevalent in the area since.

Winter raptors have definitely arrived in Colorado.  I have actually seen numerous Northern Harriers, Bald Eagles and Prairie Falcons, which are much more common around here in the wintertime.  More importantly, although I have not yet personally sighted any, the two winter Hawks which migrate south are being spotted around the County and state.  Ferruginous Hawks have been seen near the typical prairie dog colonies-I might have seen one far out on “my” field, sitting on the ground as they do, but it was getting dark and of course I didn’t have my binoculars (not going to happen again!).  Rough-legged hawks have also already been spotted with some frequency at a few locations, including by Amgen near Longmont as well as out by Stearns Lake in Superior.

Other sightings around Colorado: I found these two items of note on owls in Arapahoe County:

1) Early this morning I had a Snowy Owl glide across the road in front of my car. I was driving northbound on I-225 between the Yosemite and Parker Road exits. The owl was flying from the north side of the road to the south side to the fields below the Cherry Creek dam. Steve Stachowiak, Highlands Ranch, CO

2) A friend living near C 470 and Platte Canyon called about an owl in his yard. He had been having trouble with heavy amts of bird droppings on his mailbox since this summer and, tiring of it, went to chase the bird out of his pine tree. To his surprise, it was a little owl perched about 8 ft up on a limb. A picture confirmed a saw-whet owl. He thinks the same bird has been there since this summer because of the continued droppings at the same site.

So, I'm not used to hearing about saw-whet owls taking up residence in the city or suburbs. Is this common? The bird lets him get a close look which he has been doing a couple times a day and we chatted about keeping interaction and interference to a minimum.

We dissected a couple of little owl pellets and they were of mice. John had noted that he hadn't had the normal influx of mice this fall! What could be better? No mice and no need to clean kitty litter!  Deb Carstensen, Arapahoe County

Please add your own sightings, information and questions to the Comments section below!

Happy Raptoring!

Glossary of both common abbreviations, as well as a few of my own, that are used on this site: RT=Red-tail Hawk, GHO=Great Horned Owl, UPR=Unidentified Perched Raptor, UFR=Unidentified Flying Raptor, LBJ=Little Brown Jobbie (any small brownish songbird like a sparrow which can often be hard to identify for those who care), YSW=Yellow Something-ed Warbler (any small warbler-like bird with some yellow, distinct category of LBJ)