Subject: Bainbridge Island Accipiters
Date: Aug 2 21:08:40 2002
From: Jamie Acker - biowler1 at juno.com


Jack & Tweeters,

One of the great benefits of Tweeters is the ability to rapidly share
information. There have been several recent postings concerning young
accipiters on Tweeters, one of which caused me to go out and study the
eye color of a young Cooper's Hawk. Having been prompted by the recent
blitz of comments on the CBC, I spent some time looking at the data from
the latest, and discovered that Seattle, Kitsap,and Padilla Bay reported
record high counts for Cooper's Hawks. I was wondering if this
translated to a high nesting population this year.

Accipiters typically do not re-use the same nests the following year (The
Birds of North America, No. 75, Cooper's Hawk). To the best of my
knowledge, none of the birds I reported nested in these same woodlots or
forests last year. The Breeding Bird Atlas gives fairly precise
locations of past nesting sites for both Sharp-shinned and Cooper's
Hawks. Breeding records for Northern Goshawks, at the request of the
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, are represented at a
township/range scale, presumably to protect those sites. (from
falconers?)

I waited until fledging to post my observations with the welfare of the
birds in mind. Barred owls pose a significantly greater threat to young
accipiters than do Tweeters subscribers.

You are however, entitled to your opinion.

Jamie Acker
Bainbridge Island,WA
Biowler1 at juno.com