I took the lazy person's method here in NoCo and had a family of North American Goshawks move into our neighborhood. The fledgling calls and sparing has been enjoyable to listen to and watch. Gardening in the front yard has taken on a whole new dimension. lol.
Had a gamekeeper in the UK show me how to find Sparrowhawk nests (Accipiter nisus). only ever looked on the floor, looking for mutes, remains of kills & moulted Spar feathers. Walked into a wood new to me & found an occupied nest within 15 minutes, the only time i looked up was to look at the nest, all the clues on the floor.
Very interesting video. I am in lowland eastern England where we have a resident population of Accipter Gentilis. They prey heavily on the introduced Sciurus Carolinensis. The perch to perch hunting technique seems to be more successful as these squirrels do not seem to be aware of danger from the air while they are feeding on the ground. I have found active nests and they have all had water nearby too. They are very secretive birds though that I see only 30% of the times I go walking,usually with the help of scattering woodpigeons and screaming crows.
Thank you very much for putting out such high quality educational videos. I have an immense curiosity of using animals to hunt and would love to pursue falconry in the future. But for now, as a young man with no stable career or housing I am not in a position to care for a raptor. However, after subscribing to this channel, I walk through the woods with new eyes and ears. I anticipate many years of admiration for the sport and lifestyle until the time comes that I may engage in it more fully myself.
Having found several hundred nests in that region, I might like to add that in the high elevation lodge pole, intermittent class 1 waterways, the dash line riparian on your topo map, water flows down it at break up but now a dry grassy corridor in summer. Stand layer composition where either the understory or a mid story layer are relatively open and a corridor (stream, logging trail, or intermittent riparian) allow movement to within 30-50 m of the nest. It’s not the water, but the corridor. Water also allows for larger diameter trees which have grown and self thinned the stand for better aerial passage thru the stand. Old logging road adjacent or thru a stands are more often the corridor in drier montane forests. Cheers!
thank you ben for the fascinating knowledge, I wonder if you can do a video on how to find owl nests especially small ones like scops owl or screech owl
Being that I live in Georgia, a Goshawk nest would be impossible to find, since they don't live here or even migrate here in Winter! I live right near the coast, which is flat. There's no mountains filled with millions of trees here! But I'll keep your advice in mind, especially of using the Goshawk calls to attract them! I'l keep my iPhone with me to playback the calls!
You'd be surprised, last September I saw a Gos just cruising along near Captain Jacks Stronghold in Northern Cali. Which is High desert, not a tree for miles.
I love the different ways people have pronunciations with words but are the same thing , for example you say gos/hawk ... here in Australia we say gosh/awk . But put it together fast to see how it sounds .
Hi i have been watching your videos recently and thanks for helping so much i am recently goin to become a falconer and i wanted to ask you how to find a kestrel nest?
Francisco Alberto Santos depends on your area. American kestrels are not super picky. They often nest in hollow trees, but also nest in tiny caves and openings in buildings. If I am looking for kestrel nests in Utah, I typically drive around until I find a pair hunting in farmland areas, and then just watch where they take their food and listen for the babies screaming. In Utah the farms are all surrounded by small irrigation canals and cottonwood trees grow along them. The kestrels will often nest in the holes in dead cottonwood trees.
@@benwoodrufffalconry thanks a lot in the area that i live in there is a pair of kestrels that in the last year they succesfully raised two offsprings but i guessed that the nest is somewhere close to the end of the road because near night time i saw them head in that direction
Ben, I am just starting working with the Forest Service here in Cedar City, and I would like to pick your brain a bit. We have been walking transects and calling for goshawks for the last 2 weeks. We have not got any birds to respond to our calls. Do they stop calling once they lay their eggs? Or maybe they just don't respond to the call we are using. We have only used the "yak yak yak" type call and not the young bird whistle. What would you recommend to make our transects as successful as possible? Thanks so much for the info on the "goshawk zone" I feel like that alone will be super helpful while surveying!
Pre incubation, courtship, soaring over territory, best indicators of where to search in upcoming hatchling phase. During incubation female sits tight, calling response low productivity. Hatchling phase is best chicks 1-35 days.... both adults very responsive. Juvenile begging phase- chicks about 40 days plus to mid August. Looking for chicks response single thin note. Juv redtail similar but a double chordal note.
c0dy85 the buteogallus family is a hugely underutilized family. Great black hawk, common black hawk, Montane solitary eagle, etc. I am working to get a black hawk to test and demonstrate its abilities. I have also had lots of success hunting female Rough-Legged hawks on jackrabbits. I don’t know if anyone else who has. And people always mock the idea. And yet mine did fantastic. I always support pioneering new species and also finding new ways to hunt traditional birds.
Gosh hawks I seen here hunting work in pairs , one will go into the tree attacking a bird and the other circling the tree waiting for it to be flushed out , ether way the prey is screwed , deadly hunters but awful to hear the hunted screaming for its life while being perused. The end result becomes food.
