Conserving the Ridgway's Hawk in Punta Cana, DR

Since the last report the first natural born Ridgway’s Hawk in Punta Cana, B44, has become totally independent and is now living around the residential area of Tortuga Bay within the Puntacana Resort & Club property. When the last report was posted the parents of B44 were still hunting for him but slowly he began hunting on his own and expanding his territory until recently when he stopped returning to his parents’ territory for meals. Over the next year he will most likely continue to explore  until he settles on an area that suits him best. B44’s birth helped spur a flurry of local media attention to the plight of the Ridgway’s Hawk and other critically endangered birds in the Dominican Republic. Accompanying this report are photos of two articles that appeared in some of the more widely circulated newspapers in the Dominican Republic: Hoy and El Nacional.

As for the parents (AV & ND), they are still together and living in and around the area where they nested several months ago. Typically Ridgway’s Hawks form a pair for life and will mate/lay eggs every year. Our hope is that AV & ND will mate again in early 2014 only this time ND hopefully will lay two or more eggs!

In other news, AN, one of the males without a mate has moved into SN’s (a female’s) territory around the Puntacana Village. SN has yet to mate with any of the other hawks in the area and we are hoping these two might form the next pair. To back this assertion up, one of the conservationists recently observed SN & AN flying in circles together, a typical behavior with hawks that are courting.

Finally, as we reach the end of 2013 we are looking to expand and build off of this year’s successes in 2014. The Peregrine Fund hopes to reintroduce as many as 20 hawks to Punta Cana and along with our project partners at Fundacion Propa-Gas, launch an even more expansive awareness campaign. To prepare for this initiative Fundacion Propa-Gas, The Peregrine Fund, and the Puntacana Ecological Foundation recently recreated the educational brochure based off of feedback from this year’s initiatives (see the accompanying photos) we are also exploring publishing other potential materials such as children’s books and t-shirts to help raise awareness about our efforts to protect this amazing bird. In order to dramatically increase the number of hawks to be reintroduced to the area we are preparing to construct new hack boxes and observational decks to handle the increased number of birds. If you have a chance to visit Punta Cana in 2014 we recommend you come and visit the Puntacana Ecological Foundation as this should be quite a site to see!

• Publicity by Dominican Newspaper El Nacional (PDF)
  

On the morning of July 2nd, 2013, staff from The Peregrine Fund acompanied by Dominican biologists climed into the first Ridgway's Hawk nest in Puntacana history. They brought the recently hatched chick safely down to the ground where it was examined, weighed, and fitted with a transmitter and identification band. The chick was identified as a male and found to be in perfect health, weighing in at 320g (about the average weight of a male his age). A blue identification band, with alphanumeric code 44, was placed on his right leg. The placement on his right leg indicates he is a male and the color blue signifies that he was born naturally in the area and not released like the other birds before him in Punta Cana. Shortly after his examination, this young hawk, now known as B44, was carefully placed back in the nest. He immediately started hopping up and down throughout his nest, playing with twigs and becoming more and more rambunctious.

On the afternoon of July 10th, another milestone was reached: B44 took his first flight! As if he had been doing it his whole life he flew from his nest to a coconut palm just across the street. From this day on he became more and more curious about his surroundings and eventually began flying beyond the immediate supervision of his parents. As the days passed B44 began developing predictable flying habits, making it easy for conservations from The Peregrine Fund to locate him - often just by listening for his calls around the nest area. More recently the chick began flying down to the ground to pick up twigs or leaves, which he would then either drop there on the ground or fly off with them only to let go of them later. The chick has also begun to display other interesting habits in which he sits perfectly still on a branch and then all of a sudden snaps into action by flying off and sinking his talons into a nearby palm tree before flying off again. This behavior indicates that he is beginning to fine tune his hunting skills.

Since the last report posted on Global Giving, biologists also managed to capture three of the adult hawks and replace their transmitters. This typically needs to be done once a year and is quite difficult to accomplish. Two hawks managed to evade our trapping methods, one of whose transmitter continues to give off a weak signal. Ultimately it was decided to leave these individuals be until they pair up with another hawk, at which time they will be much easier to capture in order to replace their transmitters. This was the case with the parents of B44 (ND & AV) neither of which had a working transmitter upon being captured at the nest site.

In other news, The Peregrine Fund continued its extensive education campaign by reaching out to new rural communities in the area as well as local businesses that had not previously been contacted. This latest round of educational presentations reached an additional 307 individuals, teaching them about the importance of this magnificent species and our conservation efforts in Punta Cana. In total, The Peregrine Fund has reached out to over 856 individuals this year, by far the most successful educational campaign in the history of this project.