Several people have been seeing this bird lately.

I thought I would forward an e-mail from my colleague, Gary Searing, at the
Vancouver BC airport (YVR) that includes some facts about this bird as well
as some information on his program.

"Thank you for reporting your sighting of 5H. These sightings are very
important to the success of my tagging program.

I tagged her as a juvenile bird at the Vancouver International Airport
(YVR) on 11 February 2017 and released it the next day in Chilliwack, BC as
part of a program to prevent raptors from being struck by aircraft. Yours
is the third sighting of this bird since it was translocated to Chilliwack.
The two previous sightings have been in the same area within the last
couple of days. Let me provide you with some information on the program so
you understand a bit more why we are doing this:

YVR began a program of trapping and removing Red-tailed Hawks and
Rough-legged Hawks in October 2010 in order to prevent them from being
struck by aircraft primarily to improve air safety, but also as a raptor
conservation tool. Each year the airport has a large number of transient
raptors that winter at YVR as well as resident adults and local-raised
young birds. Based on information from SeaTac International Airport in
Washington, we expect that adult residents are least likely to be involved
in collisions with aircraft, but a significant number of young birds and
transient birds are struck each year. Therefore, we are attempting to
remove those birds from the airport environs by capturing them and
releasing them just beyond Chilliwack where there is ample habitat and a
reasonable likelihood that they will not return to YVR. I view this not
only as an air safety program, but also as a raptor conservation program
because, if successful, we may prevent the deaths of a dozen or more birds
each year. We expanded the program in 2013 to all raptors (including owls).
To date we have captured and relocated over 600 birds. Most of them were
relocated to Chilliwack. To date there has been more than 5500 resightings
of my tagged and banded birds. While most of those sightings are of birds
that have returned to YVR, there have been over 300 sightings of 100
different birds away from Sea-Iona Islands by over 150 observers who are
not part of the YVR wildlife management team.

33 American Kestrels
2 Bald Eagles (nestlings)
1 Barred Owl
283 Barn Owls (only a dozen or so have returned to YVR)
86 Cooper's Hawks
29 Great Horned Owls
4 Merlins
7 Northern Harriers (none have returned to YVR)
1
5 Peregrine Falcons
25 Rough-legged Hawks (5 have returned to YVR)
206 Red-tailed Hawks
16 Short Eared Owls (1 returned to YVR)
2 Snowy Owls (1 returned to YVR)
3 Sharp-shinned Hawks
2 Gyrfalcons

Raptors are one of the major strike risks at YVR and we believe that we are
mitigating that risk significantly through the capture and relocation of
raptors.

It is through the sightings of many interested persons such as yourself
that we are able to collect the essential information on bird movements and
distribution and learn how well the measures we are using to manage
wildlife at the airport and elsewhere are working. We are in the process of
developing a new website. The first steps have been taken to allow you to
report your sightings online. Next steps will be to allow you to plot the
location of the bird sighted on a map and finally you will receive instant
feedback on the history of the bird you reported. I hope we can get the
last two aspects of the website working by summer. I will let you know when
it is up and working.

Thank you for your cooperation and your interest. Feel free to contact me
for more information or with any sighting information.

Regards

Gary"
-----------------------------
*Gary F. Searing, M.Sc. Wildlife Hazard BiologistAirport Wildlife
Management InternationalExecutive DirectorBird Strike Committee Canada*

9655 Ardmore Drive
North Saanich, British Columbia
Canada V8L 5H5
Cell: 250.857.5133 <(250)%20857-5133>
Skype: gfsearing
http://www.airportwildlife.ca
http://www.canadianbirdstrike.ca <http://www.airportwildlife.ca/>



Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232
(360) 757-1911
falconresearch at gmail.com
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