Mike Yates with an adult female
The spring survey began on April 14, and was conducted by Bill Seegar, Mike Yates and Carl Thelander. For several days we had full access to the wind tidal flats and interior trails. High Laguna Madre and Gulf tides soon reduced our survey area and a severe thunderstorm in the early morning hours of April 19 limited our access to a small northeast segment of the island. Just as the flats had begun to dry another storm event early on April 24 returned them to April 19 conditions. Thunderstorms that afternoon curtailed survey activities until April 26, and left the survey limited to patrolling the dune margin north of Deer Island to a small soft but passable section of the extreme northeast flats. Flats began to dry on April 30 and we gained access to about a third of the study area north of Deer Island, but high Laguna Madre waters continued to saturate the majority of the study area and make travel difficult on the remainder. Strong northern winds kept us from the field May 2 but stacked up many new migrants on the flats. Lighter north winds on our final day (May 3) provided a stellar (for the spring) day with 13 new captures. In 168 hours, 40 minutes of survey time we observed a total of 483 peregrines. Of that number we recorded 52 new captures, six returns of falcons banded during previous surveys, and three retraps of individuals first banded this spring. We added 53 blood samples to our archive and collected feather samples from all 41 adults captured for collaborative mercury studies.