Goshute Mountains Migration Site Photo Gallery

Photos from 2003
SL Tribune Article

HawkWatch members trap and tag every
autumn in the Goshute Mountains

By Brett Prettyman
The Salt Lake Tribune

GOSHUTE MOUNTAINS, Nev. -- Seeing a wild hawk, eagle or owl is thrill enough for most people, but the trappers and observers of HawkWatch International are not most people.      
      Kara Donohue, leader of the raptor migration research site on these mountains 30 miles south of Wendover, has not showered in two weeks because she is afraid she might miss "a cool bird."
    "Everybody up here definitely has a serious passion for birds," says Donohue, a New York native who heard about the Goshute Project while working with another birding group in Cape May, N.J. "The first time I held a captured hawk I couldn't believe the feeling. It was the greatest thing in the whole world."
     Donohue and nine other field biologists from across the United States came to the Goshute Mountains in mid-August for the largest annual migration of raptors in the West.
     In an open-air kitchen tent set among mountain mahogany trees at a 9,000-foot elevation, trappers talk about returning to civilization in November, after nearly four months of living in the wilderness.
     "It's kind of hard," says observer Adam Hutchins, originally from Tucson, Ariz. "My first instinct is to sleep on the floor and to go outside to go to the bathroom."

releasing hawk

Mindy Rostal, an education intern with Salt Lake City-based HawkWatch International, releases
a female adult sharp-shinned hawk after it was captured and banded by the organization Monday. The nonprofit group monitors birds of prey and their environments through research, education and conservation. Keeping tabs on raptors' numbers is important because they are at the top of the food chain and therefore can indicate problems within ecosystems, researchers say. (Lisa Marie Miller/The Salt Lake Tribune)

 

 
     The Goshute ritual started in 1980 when Steve Hoffman hypothesized that a significant number of raptors were funneled to the area because it bordered the Great Salt Lake Desert, a place the birds avoided flying over.
     He had already found another major flyway on the east side of the Great Salt Lake in northern Utah's Wellsville Mountains.
     Hoffman was right about the Goshutes area. Standardized counts were set up in 1983, and three years later, Hoffman founded Salt Lake City-based HawkWatch International, a nonprofit group with the mission of monitoring birds of prey and their environments through research, education and conservation.
     More than 50,000 raptors representing 18 species have been captured and banded in the Goshutes since those first birds were glimpsed 23 years ago. Observers now document between 11,000 and 25,000 raptors heading south each fall.      

sharp-shinned hawkThe numbers are important because, as the apex predator of the food chain, raptors serve as indicators of problems within ecosystems -- problems that may eventually affect humans.
     Salt Lake City resident Debra Sandack remembers following Hoffman 2 1/2 miles up the mountain with pink ribbons marking the trail in the early days. After 17 years of spending her autumns in the Goshutes, she has come to know the trail and the mountain well.
     Sandack says the research aspect of the trapping makes her feel a little less selfish about her passion for working with the birds of prey.
     "I would feel a little guilty if I was just doing this for fun," says Sandack, sitting in a blind pulling a cord that lifts a bait pigeon into the air for passing raptors to notice. "I feel a little bit guilty for interfering with their flight path and because they don't get to eat what they come in for. But the research will help them in the long run, and that is more important."      
     There are three working raptor blinds in the Goshutes, but only two are used each day. Two people sit in each blind, peeking out through a narrow gap hoping to see incoming birds. Every minute or so Sandack will "fish" for unseen birds by pulling a cord that vaults a pigeon into the sky.
      The pigeon serves as lure for any passing birds, but it may be too big for some of the smaller species. Trappers also have lines leading to doves, starlings and sparrows. They will pull the cords to entice smaller raptors into the area and, they hope, into one of the nearby mist nets.
     Once removed from the nets, the birds are identified, weighed, measured and banded before being released. Some are outfitted with satellite transmitters so they can be tracked. People can see where these birds have been by logging onto the organization's Web site at http://www.hawkwatch.org. Among the trackable birds are golden eagles, red-tailed hawks and Northern goshawks. looking through scope
              Visitors are welcome at the Goshute site, though some may be troubled by the use of live birds to lure raptors into the nets. However, Donohue says the lure birds are rarely injured because each one wears a leather jacket to protect it from sharp talons should a raptor make contact.
     She said some studies have used robotic lure birds but that few of the raptors were fooled.
     "They had about a 30 to 40 percent success rate of the live birds," Donohue said. "When you are trying to get good data that is just not an acceptable number."
     HawkWatch is limited to using nonnative species as lure birds; they rotate the birds every 90 minutes in addition to giving them every other day off. Some of the lure birds have been making the trip up the mountain for years and some have earned names as the favorites of certain trappers.      
     Beautiful weather has made the camping great this season, but it has made trapping the birds difficult.
     "We had two weeks of pure blue skies and no wind. The flights were just sky high and they just wouldn't come down," Donohue said. "The count may not be a lot lower, but the trapping is abominable. We are something like 1,300 birds down and I don't think we will make it up."2003 field crew
     The blinds will be shut down Oct. 31 and the Goshute season will officially end Nov. 5, when the observers hang up their binoculars and head down the mountain. Sandack, per tradition, will pack her tent and sleeping bag in water- and critter-proof storage bins and leave them at the campsite. As long as the raptors return, she will too.
    "You know, I lost my mother when I was a kid. It is somehow healing to me that the birds keep coming back every year. She didn't come back, but they do every year and that reaffirms my life somehow."

All photos courtesy of Salt Lake Tribune


bpretty@sltrib.com
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