Every year since 2002 a group of volunteer raptor enthusiasts keep their eyes on the sky and complete 10-month study on Seattle’s Cooper’s Hawks.
The study was started by Jack Bettesworth and has been spearheaded by Ed Deal since 2012. Deal logged more than 700 site visits between February and October and his group of volunteers logged hundreds more. Deal said the study has three main goals.
First, the volunteers try to census the city of Seattle and figure out how many Cooper’s Hawks’ nests exist each year. This year the group located 41 nest-building pairs between February and September and 34 of those pairs successfully produced young who lived to fly. [Read more…]