[Tweeters] Truly Specialized Habitat

[Eric Snyder]

If it's of any use, we were just up at the West 90 the weekend before last, 02/10, and had 3 SEO and one Shrike out in the shrub cluster out by the dike.

-Eric Snyder

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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2024 13:36:52 -0800
From: Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
To: jimbetz at jimbetz.com
Cc: TWEETERS tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Truly special habitat - or just 'learned
        locations'?
Message-ID: <6B5230FD-8B26-4E97-A54D-3C8F0FC97CAD at comcast.net>
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Jim, some years ago the entire roadside from East 90 to West 90 was in grasses and weeds and always had harriers and owls, but then they plowed most of the fields on the south side of the road.That got rid of the voles and their predators. The north side of the road still seems to have appropriate habitat, but perhaps it?s not. Also, there have been some floods that probably eliminated a lot of the voles (they were all over the road during one of them). It is impressive that whatever the vole population is, it?s large enough to support all those raptors. But voles multiply at a high rate.

Rough-legged Hawks have all but disappeared from the Skagit County farmlands, and I don?t know how much of that is due to vole decline and how much to climate change. Northern Shrikes used to be fairly common in that area, but they too have disappeared, and perhaps neither of those species is wintering as far south as they used to. Same thing, of course, for Snowy Owls.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


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