Mount Zion Hawk Watch at Windy Saddle Park (20 Sep 2026) 82 Raptors
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Sep 21, 2026, 12:03:11 AM (3 days ago) Sep 21
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Mount Zion Hawk Watch at Windy Saddle Park
Golden, Greater Denver, Colorado, USA
To see hourly weather data and details of migrant raptors, look up this watch at hawkcount.org. This is a new raptor migration site identified and designated in mid-September 2024. This is Colorado's 1st fall hawk watch site, and the second hawk watch in Colorado. To get to the site which is along Lookout Mountain Rd. in Golden, enter either Windy Saddle Park or Mount Zion into Google Maps on your favorite navigation app, or enter the coordinates 39.7368,-105.2454. From the parking lot ascend the stone steps to the watch site. EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO THE HAWK WATCH TO ENJOY THE SPECTACLE OF RAPTOR MIGRATION, EVEN IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IDENTIFYING RAPTORS IN FLIGHT. We will help you to learn Raptor ID if you are interested. See https://groups.google.com/g/cobirds/c/Oznn4uc6MBk
Visitors:
Scott Severs from Longmont, president of Boulder Audubon, joined us for the entire day. He read our reports on COBirds, and is an experienced birder and hawk watcher, having counted hawks 2-3 times a week in the 1990s for 4 years after the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory now the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies stopped funding paid counters, and Jeff Birek organized volunteers to count. Scott was excellent in finding numerous hawks especially distant ones to the NW and west, identifying them rapidly, and photographing them, so helping us ID sexes of kestrels for example. Many hikers asked us many questions about the hawk watch, and one of them stayed over an hour. We were able to show easily visible GE, BE, CH, NH, TV to visitors who were duly impressed, as some of them were initially difficult to see against the blue sky, and they felt elated when they were able to see them.
Weather:
Slight haze around Denver caused by an inversion layer which cleared up, light cloud cover, light winds from the NE while the winds aloft were from the West.
Raptor Observations:
This is the highest single day total this season - 82 migrant raptors. We also passed the 1,000 migrant raptor count for the season. We had an excellent Cooper's Hawk day with 27, and 3 GE - 2 adults and a juvenile. Checking Hawkcount.org for the Dinosaur Ridge Hawk Watch in spring which is what we have to compare with in Colorado, before the last 5 years when there have been paid professional counting 8 hours daily, going back to 11 years before that there have only been 3 years which have had seasonal counts over 1,000, and the counts going back from 2021 for 5 years had 1101, 556, 808, 588, 692 respectively. A subadult GE with no white wing or tail patches but with faint whitish along the greater coverts ventrally gave us a big problem. We initially found soaring to the East at 2:25 p.m. where joined an adult GE and both flew to the South looking like migrants, but they individually went to the NE at 2:25 p.m., the subadult circling around for a long time, then glided strongly to the SW close to the horizon and we counted it, and a few minutes later a visitor named Rob, the one who stayed over an hour, told us that it had perched on a tree next to the westernmost antenna on Lookout Mountain. This was a few minutes after we had counted it, and we thought perhaps he saw a TV land, but looking through a scope we could easily see it was a GE, this being 2:55 p.m. We decided to watch it in case it was a migrant. An RT dove on it 6 times with dropped talons, and the GE finally flew far to the NE at 3:11 p.m., non-migrant. Non-migrant raptors: GE 2, RT 3, TV 3, BE 2.
Non-raptor Observations:
8 paragliders after 11:00 a.m. MDT with excellent lift flying extremely high and going far north and south.
Predictions:
Sunny, with a high near 73. Calm wind becoming east 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon.
Report submitted by Ajit Antony (aian...@earthlink.net)
More information at hawkcount.org: [Site Profile] [Day Summary] [Month Summary]
This is an automated email report from hawkcount.org.
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Golden, Greater Denver, Colorado, USA
To see hourly weather data and details of migrant raptors, look up this watch at hawkcount.org. This is a new raptor migration site identified and designated in mid-September 2024. This is Colorado's 1st fall hawk watch site, and the second hawk watch in Colorado. To get to the site which is along Lookout Mountain Rd. in Golden, enter either Windy Saddle Park or Mount Zion into Google Maps on your favorite navigation app, or enter the coordinates 39.7368,-105.2454. From the parking lot ascend the stone steps to the watch site. EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO THE HAWK WATCH TO ENJOY THE SPECTACLE OF RAPTOR MIGRATION, EVEN IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IDENTIFYING RAPTORS IN FLIGHT. We will help you to learn Raptor ID if you are interested. See https://groups.google.com/g/cobirds/c/Oznn4uc6MBk
| Daily Raptor Counts: Sep 20, 2026 | |||
| Species | Day's Count | Month Total | Season Total |
| Black Vulture | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Turkey Vulture | 3 | 94 | 199 |
| Osprey | 1 | 20 | 22 |
| Bald Eagle | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Northern Harrier | 3 | 9 | 10 |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | 8 | 10 | 13 |
| Cooper's Hawk | 27 | 95 | 109 |
| American Goshawk | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Broad-winged Hawk | 2 | 56 | 56 |
| Red-tailed Hawk | 18 | 229 | 386 |
| Rough-legged Hawk | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Swainson's Hawk | 1 | 114 | 129 |
| Ferruginous Hawk | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Golden Eagle | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| American Kestrel | 9 | 73 | 93 |
| Merlin | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Peregrine Falcon | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Prairie Falcon | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Mississippi Kite | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Unknown Accipitrine | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Unknown Buteo | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Unknown Falcon | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Unknown Eagle | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Unknown Raptor | 5 | 7 | 8 |
| Total: | 82 | 720 | 1043 |
| Observation start time: | 08:00:00 |
| Observation end time: | 16:00:00 |
| Total observation time: | 8 hours |
| Official Counter | Ajit Antony |
| Observers: | Liza Antony, Scott Severs |
Visitors:
Scott Severs from Longmont, president of Boulder Audubon, joined us for the entire day. He read our reports on COBirds, and is an experienced birder and hawk watcher, having counted hawks 2-3 times a week in the 1990s for 4 years after the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory now the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies stopped funding paid counters, and Jeff Birek organized volunteers to count. Scott was excellent in finding numerous hawks especially distant ones to the NW and west, identifying them rapidly, and photographing them, so helping us ID sexes of kestrels for example. Many hikers asked us many questions about the hawk watch, and one of them stayed over an hour. We were able to show easily visible GE, BE, CH, NH, TV to visitors who were duly impressed, as some of them were initially difficult to see against the blue sky, and they felt elated when they were able to see them.
Weather:
Slight haze around Denver caused by an inversion layer which cleared up, light cloud cover, light winds from the NE while the winds aloft were from the West.
Raptor Observations:
This is the highest single day total this season - 82 migrant raptors. We also passed the 1,000 migrant raptor count for the season. We had an excellent Cooper's Hawk day with 27, and 3 GE - 2 adults and a juvenile. Checking Hawkcount.org for the Dinosaur Ridge Hawk Watch in spring which is what we have to compare with in Colorado, before the last 5 years when there have been paid professional counting 8 hours daily, going back to 11 years before that there have only been 3 years which have had seasonal counts over 1,000, and the counts going back from 2021 for 5 years had 1101, 556, 808, 588, 692 respectively. A subadult GE with no white wing or tail patches but with faint whitish along the greater coverts ventrally gave us a big problem. We initially found soaring to the East at 2:25 p.m. where joined an adult GE and both flew to the South looking like migrants, but they individually went to the NE at 2:25 p.m., the subadult circling around for a long time, then glided strongly to the SW close to the horizon and we counted it, and a few minutes later a visitor named Rob, the one who stayed over an hour, told us that it had perched on a tree next to the westernmost antenna on Lookout Mountain. This was a few minutes after we had counted it, and we thought perhaps he saw a TV land, but looking through a scope we could easily see it was a GE, this being 2:55 p.m. We decided to watch it in case it was a migrant. An RT dove on it 6 times with dropped talons, and the GE finally flew far to the NE at 3:11 p.m., non-migrant. Non-migrant raptors: GE 2, RT 3, TV 3, BE 2.
Non-raptor Observations:
8 paragliders after 11:00 a.m. MDT with excellent lift flying extremely high and going far north and south.
Predictions:
Sunny, with a high near 73. Calm wind becoming east 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon.
Report submitted by Ajit Antony (aian...@earthlink.net)
More information at hawkcount.org: [Site Profile] [Day Summary] [Month Summary]
This is an automated email report from hawkcount.org.
If you do not wish to receive these reports, please send email to unsub...@hawkcount.org to unsubscribe.
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