The Hawk That Wouldn't Migrate - Brief Article

Waldo, the Red-tail, prefers million-dollar Matin County neighborhoods.

For longer than anybody knows, the southern tip of Matin County has been home to one of the largest concentrations of birds of prey in western North America. Tens of thousands of hawks, kites, falcons, eagles, osprey, vultures, and harriers appear in the skies over the Golden Gate from August through December. Since the early 1980s, community volunteers of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) have been studying and monitoring the fall raptor migration, using ground counts, banding, and radio-tracking techniques.

We all wonder where these hawks come all wonder where these hawks come from--is it way up north? Oregon, Washington, or Canada? How far have they traveled? What ordeals have they survived? In our 1998 season, the GGRO telemetrists chased Waldo, the first adult Red-tailed hawk we've ever tracked, and were stunned to find that the hawk was going ... back where it came from!

GGRO trackers released Waldo on October 19. Waldo weighed almost three pounds and, being big, was probably a female, although with Red-tails you can never be certain. Waldo was also in heavy molt and looking rather sloppy. About six primary feathers were missing from the wings, along with a few feathers from the tail.

After releasing Waldo, the telemetrists hoped for the high-soaring, fast-flying, long-distance migration of our wild imaginations. But Waldo flew only eleven miles in two weeks--all within Marin County. The movements were so limited that the trackers actually saw Waldo many times. Some of those observations lasted hours.

On the first night, the trackers found Waldo roosting at the Waldo Tunnel on Highway 101, just half a mile from her release site. On the second night, Waldo roosted in Sausalito, about one-and-a-half miles from the tunnel. On the third night, Waldo traveled seven miles north to Larkspur, then stayed in the general Larkspur area for the next six days.

One day, the team walked up and down busy Magnolia Avenue in Larkspur, as the hawk merely perch-hopped all morning. Waldo perched on the roof of one house for nearly an hour. She preened, stretched her wings, flexed her tail, and just sat there, looking around. When she jumped off the roof, she initially sank in the air, due to her tremendous weight. But she lifted herself with heavy flaps, to perch in one of the many tall trees along the street. At the new perch, she proceeded to get comfortable, preen, and look around for another hour or so. For an entire day, the telemetrists observed Waldo hopping from perch to perch.

That night, Waldo was in a redwood tree in the landscaping of a Chevron station. The trackers dined at a restaurant across the street. A tracker kept tabs on her from the restaurant window all through dinner.

On the ninth day, the trackers were very bored, itching for a real hectic chase to, oh ... Santa Cruz? Suddenly, Waldo soared so high and long that all we saw was one of those dots in the sky that hawkwatchers call an "unidentified raptor." Waldo was a mere flake of black pepper against a light blue cloud-streaked sky. Was she finally ready to move?

But she only flew to Kentfield, a mile north. She settled into an area thick with trees, well-shaded, and cool, with lushly riparian ravines. It appeared to be a high-income community with million-dollar homes. Ongoing construction was occurring. We theorized that Waldo might like the noisy construction, since the clearing and digging would flush out rodents to eat.

On November 2, two weeks after Waldo's release, she flew another mile north to Ross, and settled in another quiet neighborhood. While tracking her there, the team met a man who claimed that his wife had been routinely feeding chicken parts to Waldo since 1981. The trackers were invited into their backyard. There stood Waldo on the lawn, tearing at a chicken gizzard the man had provided. The stupefied telemetrists stood back, gaping. Never in our craziest dreams did we expect to find a hawk eating chicken parts!

For this study, at least, we found out not only where the bird went, but also where it came from. "Home" for Waldo is a riparian zone in a residential part of Ross in Marin County; a watchful woman providing chicken for food; a human neighborhood, rich in prey, green with trees, the hillside speckled with expensive houses. It is noisy with human activity. And it's been home for Waldo since at least 1981.

The Marin Headlands, on the other hand, may be a vacation spot for Waldo, perhaps for an annual family reunion or a yearly pilgrimage. This 1998 telemetry study clearly demonstrated how much we don't know about hawks. Perhaps that's why GGRO volunteers come back, year after year. We want to know more about the lives of these hawks because we keep learning such truly amazing things.

Libby Rouan is a hazardous materials specialist for San Mateo County. She has hawkwatched and radio-tracked for GGRO for ten years.

This article originally appeared in slightly different form in the Winter 1999 Pacific Raptor Report, the newsletter of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (see access, page 94). Reprinted with permission.

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