Bird Researcher to Speak on NM Red-Tailed Hawks

By Ben Neary/NMWF

Some of the varieties of red-tailed hawk that winter in New Mexico travel as far as Alaska during the summer. Others are content to stay here year-round.

Nicole Richardson, a Canadian bird researcher, has extensive experience tracking red-tailed hawks in New Mexico and elsewhere in the United States.

Richardson will present a talk April 8 in Albuquerque on the varieties of red-tailed hawks in New Mexico and their migration patterns. Her free presentation is part of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s “Wildlife Wednesday” series.

Richardson lives in Ontario and works with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. She works remotely, collecting data on bird species as part of the Cornell’s Birds of the World team.

Richardson also has been working with the independent Red-Tailed Hawk Project for five years. The group focuses on the ecology and evolution of the species.

The project has a core team of six researchers, Richardson said. Its work last year included deploying transmitters on hawks in New Mexico and elsewhere in the West. There are 16 subspecies of red-tailed hawk, she said, with various types having different colors and markings on their feathers.

The project tracks over 200 transmitters on red tail hawks across the continent now, Richardson said. She said researchers are starting to work on an academic paper addressing variations in the spring migration of different subspecies.

“Raptors are notoriously challenging to survey at a population level,” Richardson said. “A lot of surveys for raptors are conducted at migration sites in North America and around the world. That makes it challenging to study the population trends.”

New Mexico is home to a fascinating diversity of red-tailed hawks, Richardson said. “You have really long-distance migrants – white-morph colored birds that we’ve tagged in this region that go and breed in northern British Columbia,” Richardson said. “We’ve checked birds in northern Alberta that fly all the way through New Mexico and winter in Mexico.”

Richardson and her colleagues also have documented other varieties of red-tailed hawk that only migrated as far as southern Colorado. 

The Bosque del Apache supports resident populations of red-tailed hawks as well as some that travel as far as Alaska, Richardson said. Other hawks that travel to Oregon also depend on the Bosque del Apache, she said. 

The research into red-tailed hawk migration patterns provides information about the species response to changes in the environment on both the individual and population levels, Richardson said. That information allows wildlife managers to take more precise conservation actions, she said. 

Richardson’s talk will start at 5:30 p.m., April 8, at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights Taproom, at 9904 Montgomery Blvd., NE., Albuquerque.