Cross your fingers or toes, or wish upon a star that the fires stay away this season! For those who did not keep up with Bonney Butte HawkWatch last year, we were only open to visitors for just over a week due to local fires and related closures. So far, the Bonney Butte crew, along with crews at our other sites, have only had to deal with occasional smoky conditions, and we are optimistic for a visitor-filled season. This week, we’re celebrating the Bonney Butte HawkWatch’s 30th anniversary with events at the site and in the Portland, OR, area. We hope to see you there and celebrate the magic of migration: https://hawkwatch.org/events/
And now, here is the crew you’ll find birding at the butte!
Karl Garrett
Karl is super excited to be returning to Bonney Butte HawkWatch for his third year as crew lead. He looks forward to welcoming visitors back to the butte after a full season of being inside a fire closure. After another long summer of monitoring Oregon Vesper Sparrows, an endangered species candidate, he is ready for a fall in front of the best hawkwatch view in the world counting raptors. Every year, he sees one or two of his favorites, the Swainson’s Hawk (Karl is advocating for Grasshopper Hawk with the new AOS name changes), but he’s hoping for a whole kettle of them. When Karl is not out doing ornithology-based fieldwork or chasing down new life birds, he enjoys fishing, disc golf, reading science fiction and fantasy books, and building miniature model airplanes. Karl welcomes you to ask about any of that while you’re visiting and looks forward to seeing y’all up on the butte!
Anna Lemon
Anna is from Gig Harbor, WA, and went to school in Illinois to get their degree in Environmental Studies. Anna is excited to be back at Bonney Butte HawkWatch for a second season and is most looking forward to being back in the blind! They’re also really looking forward to Bonney being open to the public for the full duration of the season this year! For fun, Anna enjoys birding as a hobby, collecting national park maps, and spending time with their pets. Anna’s favorite nocturnal raptor is the Spotted Owl, and their favorite diurnal raptor is the Northern Harrier.
Emily Pierce
Emily graduated from SUNY-ESF in 2015 and has since been hopping around to various field jobs all across the West. While her career started with songbird banding and teaching about raptors with the help of docent birds, Emily realized her love of studying wild raptors during her internship at Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. Since then, she has spent the bulk of her time working with her favorite raptor, the California Spotted Owl, on a demography study in Northern California. Emily loves going birding in her spare time, as well as biking, climbing, hiking, or lounging on the Deschutes with her dog, Aquila. She plans on bringing a full library of books and board games to play with the crew and is most looking forward to seeing what surprises migration will bring at the Bonney Butte HawkWatch this year!
Natalie Graves
Natalie Graves is a recent magna cum laude graduate from Washington State University, holding a degree in Wildlife Ecology with minors in Forestry and GIS. She is ecstatic to begin her first hawkwatching season and looks forward to improving her raptor ID and banding capabilities. Before this migration season, Natalie spent most of her time on the water working for USFWS and TLNWR to band waterfowl, conduct mussel surveys, and conserve the Endangered endemic Lost River and Shortnose suckerfish populations. In her free time, she loves cooking, being outdoors, and is eager to get her hands on pottery clay whenever she can. She has a particular love for Great Horned Owls because of their eccentric presence in her life.
If you need help planning your trip or are curious about how the count is going throughout the season, join our “Friends of Bonney Butte HawkWatch” Facebook group! You can chat directly with our crew and other bird nerds excited about the fall count.
This blog was written by Sammy Riccio, our Communications Manager, as well as our 2024 crewmembers. You can learn more about Sammy here.
