Got a pretty decent, not great, pic of a Northern Harrier just off state Hwy. 67 this afternoon while motoring out to Mountain Home Air Force Base from the city of Mountain Home. I never fail to see one of these raptors while traveling north into Camas County or south off the highway to Grand View in Owyhee County. Does anyone know what the breeding status and population estimate is for southern Idaho? Rainy, off and on, but it didn’t slow the desert-loving Common Ravens.
—
Alan C Gregory Lt. Col., USAF, Ret. Mountain Home, ID Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association, life member Member, North American Butterfly Association
Yes, I would be interested in taking this on. I do travel up to Camas and Blaine counties several times a year, for birding, butterflying and bicycling.
You are welcome Alan :). I am curious, do you spend a good bit of time in this area? The reason I ask is that the only coverage that I have for our project consists of a highway speed coverage of Hwy 20 from Mt Home to Hailey, we have no off road coverage on any of what looks to be prime raptor habitat. The hardest thing for me in this project is to find folks to cover certain areas that are out of the way from population centers where I can draw volunteers from. Next winter, if you are interested, I could build a route out there that could add valuable data to our project data base. The challenging part of building a route is to find the right roads that you can drive on during winter conditions, if you have spent a lot of time in this area, might you have some segments of roads that you could recommend that would be open for winter driving? No arm twisting here, just thought you might be interested in our project enough to help with future needs :). To give you an idea of what our project is all about, I put together a power point presentation that can be found at this link: ecaudubon.org which will take you to the East Cascades Audubon Society’s webpage, sponsors of the project. Look for the picture of the flying bald eagle then follow directions to the start of the program. There are 227 slides full of charts and maps and hundreds of excellent raptor photos. Most of the slides have an audio track filled with information about the project and the birds that have been found, lots of ID tips too :). Check it out on one of these cold winter days coming up! :). Good birding to you 🙂
Jeff, Thanks for the ID correction. I never even considered Ferruginous. The first one of those I saw was years ago in the Morley Nelson-Snake River Birds of Prey area.
I birded along U.S. Hwy. 20 from Mountain Home to Fairfield, Camas County, yesterday. Many birds of prey perched on roadside utility poles. The variability in the plumage of Red-tailed Hawks is striking, especially between Redtails of the mid-Atlantic (I lived and birded in Pennsylvania for 21 years) and those of the Great Basin.
The best find for me yesterday was a Rough-legged Hawk (photo attached).
Alan Gregory in Mountain Home
—
Alan C Gregory Lt. Col., USAF, Ret. Mountain Home, ID Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association, life member Member, North American Butterfly Association
I had recently written a limerick to our oldest granddaughter, Olivia age 7, hinting that she might some day write her own book. Yesterday during our brief visit with her and family in Twin Falls to exchange gifts and holiday wishes, she showed us two “books” she had just “published” – one about her favorite birds and what they eat – very cute and much fun !! =)
Hoping for safe and memorable holidays for all of us on IBLE, stuff that brings us lasting smiles, eh?
