Some folks have noticed that the Goshawk tapes are loosing their
effectiveness from over use, so in the spring are watching for the morning
display flights, or using a live GHO in the open instead for nest locating.
Clarence

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Schwitters" <lpatters at ix.netcom.com>
To: <Tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 12:35 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] My life amidst Goshawks


> Tweeters,
>
> In 2001 I gave the Forest Service two days and one night of my life to
> survey Northern Goshawks and Great Gray Owls NW of Naches. I was warned
> that while the Owls were harmless, the Goshawks might want a piece of you.
> They gave me a large forest service map with ten or so highlighted areas
> that had been determined to be prime Goshawk locations. They also gave
> me a boom-box and a cassette tape. You find the location, play the tape,
> wait 5 minutes, travel 100 yards, play the tape, go another 100 yards and
> give em the Goshawk fight song, until you have completed a grid of the
> area. With a compass and altimeter, but no GPS, I had my hands full, but
> pretty much finished the task. Not only was I not once attacked by these
> fierce predators, I never noted a vocal response. Didn't get any owls
> either.
>
> A year plus later I got my lifer Goshawk in a large cottonwood in SE
> Arizona.
>
> Two years after that we spent quality time with an immature bird on Cape
> Cod.
>
> A year later we had a fly-by on Salmo Mt.
>
> That's it.
>
> But wait.
>
> There have been a number of times, the majority without optics, where I
> noted an lone Accipiter soaring high in the sky over Pugetsoundsville and
> assumed these were Cooper's Hawks. Silly Larry. I had a couple of emails
> with Nelson Briefer and believe his "Accipiter Alert" is little more than
> "Look to the sky", those soaring Accipiters are Goshawks. Mr Briefer is
> convinced that this soaring is something Goshawks do, and the other
> Accipiters pretty much don't. All the single soaring Accipiters I've
> observed seemed too small for Goshawks, but size is tricky at a distance.
> We may need a surface-to-air missile to collect one.
>
> That's it?
>
> If it is, perhaps Mr Briefer would have been better off framing his
> discussion as "Goshawks can be seen if you look in an unexpected place",
> rather than "Goshawks are not as rare as commonly believed."
>
> Larry Schwitters
> Issaquah
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