It’s hard to believe, but in a few weeks we will be gearing up for another spring migration and our third season deploying transmitters on Red-tailed Hawks. In the meantime, let’s jump in and get caught up on what has been going on.
One of the main objectives when we started this project was to document the migratory routes for this population of Red-tailed Hawks. Specifically, we wanted to see if the Straits are used as heavily during fall migration as they are during the spring. In short, what we are finding is that most of the birds we have tagged do use the Straits during both migrations. However, as we predicted we have also seen fall routes where the Straits aren’t used but the avoidance of large water crossings remains consistent. To date, we have had two individuals that migrate through southern Ontario en route to their respective wintering grounds and it would be a fair assumption to suggest that other Red-tailed Hawks that use the Straits in spring also utilize a similar route through southern Ontario in the fall (See map below).
After almost two years of tracking this population we are also starting to get a good sense of what the winter distribution looks like. We have now documented 4 states where we have had birds set up winter territories. These include Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. The map above shows fall migrations for 16 individuals from this project and what states they wintered in.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we were excited by Bucatini’s fall migration route. We first saw him travel west through the Upper Peninsula. He then island hopped along Lake Michigan before reaching the mainland of Wisconsin in mid-November (See Bucatini map).
Bucatini has also provided other interesting data as he never stayed on a permanent territory this winter. Instead, he gradually moved south and he spent the majority of his time in Wisconsin and Illinois. While in Illinois he spent a few weeks in Chicago in a very urban area. Perhaps Bucatini was scouting potential sites for next year. He is also one of our youngest birds we tagged so it will be interesting to see how his behavior changes now that he is in his fourth year. On a side note, we are curious to see if he will attempt to breed this upcoming summer as we suspect he should be at the appropriate age to be recruited into the breeding population.
Spring Migration 2023:
We also have news on the migration front. Rip, who was initially tagged in 2021 has started heading North. Rip is part of the Kentucky crew, and he has spent the last two winters near Frankfort. This year he started migrating on February 26th and in 2022 he started on March 5th. He is currently outside Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 2022 it took him 52 days to get to his breeding location so it will be interesting to see if he takes a similar amount of time this spring. He also has provided us with one of our most extensive and detailed data sets as we have exactly 77,404 GPS points along with the associated behavioral and environmental data. At the time of capture Rip was aged to be an after-4th cycle bird meaning he was at least 5 years old. Now he is at least 7 but he could be even older. It’s safe to say Rip has a lot of miles under his belt!
