History of Raptors in Seattle

A brief  history of the expansion of urban raptors in western Washington was described by Bud Anderson, founder of Falcon Research Group, in the Washington Ornithological Society newsletter. Here is a modified version of his article.

Urban raptor expansion is happening all across North America. It is also under way in Europe, with goshawks and sparrowhawks also moving into cities.

Raptors have been observed in cities in the Pacific Northwest for over 60 years. The first documentation of Merlins in a North American city was by Lynn Oliphant in 1971 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In Washington, little historic information existed until the 1980s, when Tom Gleason, Jim Fackler, and others started finding nesting merlin pairs on the Olympic Peninsula, up the Skagit and Stillaguamish Rivers, and other locations. The first known city pair in Washington was in Bellingham in 2000. Over the next few years, merlins started a slow southward “colonization” from Burlington to Seattle. Seattle’s first Red-tailed Hawks were documented after the I-5 freeway opened back in the mid-1960s. Shortly afterwards, Bald Eagles showed up in Kirkland and Seattle’s Seward Park. The first nesting pair of Peregrine Falcons since the ban on the pesticide DDT arrived in Seattle in 1994. When the first Cooper’s Hawks started to breed here is unknown. Butch Olendorff found a pair on the hillside west of the Duwamish Slough in the late 1960s. Ospreys are likely to have been nesting on Lake Washington even further back in time.

Three species of urban raptors in Seattle have been studied for years: Peregrine Falcons, Cooper’s Hawks, and Merlins. Other urban raptors — Sharp-shinned Hawks, American Kestrels, Owl species, Bald Eagles, Ospreys — have long been observed as well. The species accounts that follow describe in more detail the history of these raptor species in Seattle and its urban environs.