Date: 11/13/26 7:29 pm From: <reports...> Subject: [cobirds] Mount Zion Hawk Watch at Windy Saddle Park (13 Nov 2026) 13 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 13, 2026
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Observation start time: 09:30:00
Observation end time: 14:30:00
Total observation time: 5 hours
Official Counter: Ajit Antony
Observers:
Visitors:
3 college students were curious as to what I was looking at. I explained
what a hawk watch and how many there are, about HMA, what thermals were (as
they hadn't heard of the word), that there are no thermals over water hence
the bottleneck in Mexico and Central America. I suggested they look at
YouTube videos of hawks over Veracruz.
5 women together were curious and I was explaining and told them I was not
ignoring them but scanning with binoculars while talking to them. I found
an RT circling over Lookout Mountain 0.3 miles south, found it in my scope
and all of them took turns looking at it. How beautiful, one said. I also
showed them a nearby TOSO on a tree which they loved. One of them said they
have a feeder where she works, so I showed her the Merlin app and what it
could do which she installed on her phone immediately. I let her look
through my binoculars and she was most impressed, wanting to know what
binoculars to get, I suggested a few inexpensive ones. As they left they
thanked me profusely for being so nice to them.
Weather:
The usual haze around the base of downtown Denver buildings extending SSE
and NNE to the horizon. Excellent-for-finding-hawks-cirrus-cloud-cover 80%
all the time I was counting. The winds aloft to start from the SSW, to NE
to NNE.The Soaring Forecast of the NWS had a Thermal Soaring Index at Poor,
lift only at 3 ft/sec, thermal height potentially only 2,411 ft AGL only a
third of a mile above the watch.
Raptor Observations:
Today was Friday the 13th but I did not have bad luck. Any day one can see
three GE migrants, a local GE, as well as a Merlin is a good one,
especially this late in the season. The first migrant RT was at 10:04 a.m.
over the flag at the Buffalo Bill Museum and it took 3 minutes for it to
migrate. It circled and circled in a thermal above Lookout Mountain but
could not get any lift, and finally went South.
The second migrant just then was a fresh-plumaged beautiful male AK
initially found low at the NE end of the Kestrel Channel, rose using ridge
lift until it was barely 20 ft in front of me!
Golden Eagles: 1. At 10:40 a.m. scanning with binoculars I saw two GE
adults, both with irregular trailing edges of their wings molting
secondaries just north of Green Mountain, one seem to migrate while the
other one went North. I kept moving my binoculars back and forth keeping
both of them in view alternately until the migrant went SSE and the other
flew over Denver - acting as an escort to ensure that the migrant left its
territory which we've seen before.
2. At 1:23 p.m. I found an adult GE far to the NW by binocular scanning,
and it streamed to the South, dropping, but landed on a ridge West of the
watch, not counted as a migrant.
3. At 1:26 p.m. an adult GE was found below the horizon south of Denver
which circled in a going fairly High went on to Green Mountain where it
circled even higher and eventually went SW.
4. At 1:37 p.m. an adult GE was found with binoculars at the southern end
of Green Mountain and immediately went SSE.
A distant Merlin was a slightly difficult ID at 10:58 a.m., it perched for
a few seconds on a high tension wire before continuing South.
On days when thermals are weak, I expect ridge lift on Lookout Mountain or
in the Gap between it and Green Mountain, and that's how today's migration
was with only one RT initially found 5� over Denver and going SE.
Non-migrant hawks: RT 1 initially looked like a migrant but landed on
antenna #3.
Non-raptor Observations:
Predictions:
There is a weak cold front going through Denver between Saturday and
Sunday, and another one between Tuesday and Wednesday, and a strong cold
front next week Friday to Saturday which will indicates to us whether to
continue observing.
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Report submitted by Ajit Antony (<aiantony...>)
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