Nice observation Gene.

I have never seen them up on the mountain ridges over the many years but then we usually quit hawk banding well before dark.

Here is an alternate theory that I have been thinking about for some time.

At Seattle-Tacoma Airport, we have put VHF radio transmitters on several resident Red-tailed Hawks. These radios last about three years. One tagged adult female usually disappears during the hottest months of the year, July and August. We just suddenly lose her signal. But then, she shows back up again in September. She is gone right now.

So she is flying off somewhere but we don't know exactly where. Could be the lowlands, could be the mountains.

In addition, several years ago at Entiat Ridge, high in the eastern Cascades, Sue Hindman caught another adult Red-tail female and we put a satellite transmitter on the bird. We fully expected it to travel south to California or somewhere like that. The transmitter failed for several days and we thought it was toast. However, sometime later, it turned on again and we got her signal from Glacier Peak, NW of our banding station. We were all pretty shocked.

She remained up in the mountains for several weeks until it started to get cold and then flew west and down in elevation to the Snohomish River Valley where she spent the winter. The transmitter eventually failed there.

Our impression was that she may have been a lowland resident from the Monroe area and she simply flew up into the mountains for part of the summer, possibly to stay cool, and we caught her there.

I was thinking that the Sea-Tac Red-tail might be doing the same sort of thing, i.e an elevational migration, as Prairie Falcons are known to do.

Could it be that Long-ears are elevational migrants?

Perhaps one of the owl experts can comment on all this.

Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232 USA
(360) 757-1911 (office)
(206) 962-7838 (cell)
bud at frg.org