2009 Western Washington Hawk Watching Class schedule:
The classic hawk ID class will be presented in January and Feburary of 2009. Please pass this information on to friends, family and any
one else that might be interested. You can get more information
about these classes here.
The Southern Cross Peregrine Project (SCPP)
-
2008
Fall Migration -
During the summer of 2008, all three satellite-tagged peregrines (Sparrow King,
Elizabetha and Fireball) remained
at their presumed nest sites in the Canadian Arctic (Baffin Island and the Boothia Peninsula). The satellite signals
showed that the activities of each bird centered on a specific geographic location all season. This clustering of
points strongly suggests that they were at their respective breeding sites throughout the nesting period. We would
like to think that each bird successfully raised young this year, but, of course, we were unable to confirm whether
this was true or not. The remoteness of the three different sites, the transportation difficulties and high costs
in accessing the Arctic breeding sites prevented us from visiting the tagged birds.
On an uplifting note, we recently received word that one of our tagged adult males,
Seven, was observed again last summer near his nest site in Tuktut Nogiak National Park in the Northwest Territories. His transmitter had stopped functioning in Chile just before the 2008 spring migration (3 April) and we did not know if he was all right. So we were delighted to hear that he is doing OK and that there had been a transmitter failure rather than mortality.
In Chile, it appears that the resident peregrine,
La Serena, is back on her nest site in the coastal mountains of the Atacama Desert once again. September is the breeding season for resident cassini peregrines in northern and central Chile. Christian Gonzalez and his friends will be checking on her soon.
You will note on this website that we are blocking her signal to keep the location of her nest site both safe and confidential. We’ll let you know her results soon.
Unfortunately, we have just had another apparent transmitter failure this month. The signals from
Fireballstopped abruptly in early September and we suspect that his transmitter has also failed. Unless it switches back on unexpectedly, we won’t be able to follow him back south this year either.
So, at this time, we will be following two adult peregrines south, both the adult male
Sparrow King (Sparky) from Antofagasta and the adult female
Elizabetha from the Putu dune fields. Both birds will be departing south from Baffin Island at any time (written on 21 September).
This will be the second time we are following Sparky on his southbound migration and we are looking forward to comparing his 2007 path with his forthcoming 2008 route. Last year, he flew south along the east coast of the US following the Atlantic flyway until he neared the Gulf of Mexico. Then he veered SW to Mexico.
We’ll also be looking to see if he visits the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary again.
Elizabetha is a different story. This will be the first time we have been able to follow her south. Will she also migrate along the eastern seaboard route? And, if so, will she continue down to Florida and cross the Gulf of Mexico to South America? Or will she too veer towards the Texas coast? Will our banding friends see her at South Padre Island? Only time will tell.
We invite you all to join us in discovering more about the migratory behavior of these fascinating birds during their fall movement.
Click here to go to the SCPP main page.
The
2009 Season:
In March, 2009, we plan to return to Chile and continue our work on the North American peregrines “wintering” there. We intend to satellite-tag several more adult female peregrine falcons south of Santiago. We have four transmitters remaining and hope to follow more birds north for a third year of data.
One of our major goals for 2009 is to check on all of the falcons that we have tagged previously in Chile (Arena, Houdini, Coquimba, Seven, La Serena, Chamiza and Fireball). We want to see if we can locate them based on their known ranges from previous years. We suspect that several of their transmitters have also failed earlier than we expected (like Seven).
If we are successful in locating these birds, we plan to try to re-trap each peregrine, remove its transmitter, and send these units back to the manufacturer (Microwave Telemetry) to see what caused the failures.
Get more information on previous year's field excursions as well as
up-to-date migration tracking maps here.
Our Mission:
The Falcon Research Group (FRG) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the
support of field research, public education, and the conservation of raptors.
