Date: 11/3/26 7:17 pm From: <reports...> Subject: [cobirds] Mount Zion Hawk Watch at Windy Saddle Park (03 Nov 2026) 21 Raptors
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
Daily Raptor Counts: Nov 03, 2026
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Observation start time: 09:15:00
Observation end time: 15:15:00
Total observation time: 5.75 hours
Official Counter: Ajit Antony
Observers: Liza Antony
Visitors:
A repeat visitor/ hiker to the hawk watch wanted to know how many migrants
we had seen. Six. Golden Eagles? he asked for he was the one last week I
had shown a GE in my scope to. No, others, below us in the Kestrel Channel.
How do you see them against the trees? Their wings shine with the sunlight
making them easy to see. I looked it up later and it's oil from the preen
glands on their wings which act has microscopic mirrors, and called
'speculum reflection.' Two others us asked whether we were bird watching,
and we explained.
Weather:
After the strong cold front had gone through yesterday afternoon, Denver
was actually clear and we could see the airport 25 miles away without
optical aid. There was lots of new snow on the 14ers. There were excellent
cirrus clouds all the way from North to East to South, and since the
Thermal Soaring Index was fair with lift at 6 ft/sec, and height of
thermals predicted by 11:30 a.m. to be 6583 ft AGL which would take
potentially migrating hawks up to 1 mile above the watch, we used the
clouds to scan higher especially in the 11:00 are onward when there were
fewer migrants seen without avail, scanning up to 4 binocular Fields above
Lookout Mountain to the South where hawks would necessarily have to fly,
but the few migrants were low over Lookout Mountain as usual.
Raptor Observations:
The first migrant was an SS at 9:37 a.m. MST.
At 9:49 a.m. a juvenile calurus/ Western RT flew from over South Table
Mountain along the Kestrel Channel, rising to the top of Lookout Mountain
and flying west to east along the treetops and it disappeared behind them
when we wrote it off as a non-migrant, we then saw it a little higher
migrating.
At 10:50 a.m. we saw a CORA chase an Osprey (which we heard calling before
we even saw it, and after, when we could not see it any more) to the North
along the Kestrel Channel. A migrating GE adult at 11:37 a.m. over
Lookout Mountain, both it and a local GE were rocking exactly like TVs
presumably because of strong winds!
We saw an adult male AK at 10:04 a.m., 11:31 a.m., 11:43 a.m. hover hunting
in the Kestrel Channel, then thrice dive bombed a perched RT on a low tree.
An adult female AK at 12:51 p.m. was chased by a BBMA in the wrong
direction along the Kestrel Channel.
After the 10:00 hour we had very few hawks and I wondered whether they were
already flying too high to see with binoculars, consistent with the Soaring
Forecast. We scanned higher against the good cloud cover and could not see
a single hawk which made us think - Are they flying too high to be seen
even with binoculars? I then thought - If thermals were 5,000 ft above the
watch, a mile high, we should be able to see them either with the naked eye
or with binoculars against the good cloud cover, since we routinely see and
identify hawks as far as over Green Mountain 4 miles away, and routinely
over the Table Mountains which are 3 mi away! The other possibility was
that they were not flying but this was inexplicable to me with good weather
conditions. Liza had the brilliant thought that perhaps the 10 hawks we saw
in the first 2 hours were grounded locally by the rain yesterday, and
others that were grounded in Northern Colorado and Wyoming 80-100 mi away
had not yet reached us. I checked online and that indeed seemed to be the
issue - they would fly past us later today or tomorrow, a "migration gap."
In fact there were very strong NW winds at Cheyenne WY which would push
migrants South to us.
Late afternoon we did not see any low migrants, and we haven't any on days
we've stayed later.
Non-migrant raptors: GE adult 1, RT 2.
Non-raptor Observations:
One paraglider at 10:31 had no lift, as did another one at 12:14 p.m. and
surprisingly by 2:15 2 more had no lift and could not even reach them level
they took off from.
Predictions:
Could be another good migration day like today. Mostly sunny, with a high
near 55. Calm wind becoming east northeast around 6 mph in the morning. The
strong NW winds from Wyoming continued aloft all today so any raptors would
be pushed South, but East of us, while the NE winds all day tomorrow should
push them back toward the watch.
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Report submitted by Ajit Antony (<aiantony...>)
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