Oct. 13 Audubon online meeting features Winter Raptor Survey Project

The Pacific Northwest’s Winter Raptor Survey Project will be featured in the Spokane Audubon Society’s October 13 online meeting.

Jeff Fleischer, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist from Oregon, will explain how the 17-year-old project sponsored by the East Cascades Audubon Society chapter in Bend, Oregon, was developed with “citizen science” volunteers to learn more about birds of prey numbers and movements.

Starting with a handful of volunteers covering 79 survey routes in Oregon, the project expanded to last winter’s 350 volunteers covering 452 routes across 27,000 miles of transects in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Northern California.

The survey continues to expand, and Fleischer is looking for more Washington volunteers. Fleischer’s presentation includes photographs, mostly by survey volunteers, of all 31 species that have been found during project surveys.

Details on joining the Oct. 13 meeting starting at 7 p.m. are in the chapter’s October “Pygmy Owl” newsletter at audubonspokane.org/the-pygmy-owl.