By Travis Wade Kidd
Sunshine and warm days contributed to a fantastically successful Bridger Raptor Festival this year with close to 5,000 attendees. Sacajawea Audubon Society (SAS) was able to continue our usual children’s activities with some minor adjustments for COVID safety. Kids built chickadee nest boxes, sketched birds, learned to use binoculars, and played a migration game where they learned about the perils in the life of raptors during their migratory flights.
A young Raptor Festival attendee tries the Binocular Blitz game. Photo by Loreene Reid.
The ideal weather all weekend allowed us to provide all activities completely outdoors. Paulette Epple debuted our new bird-safe windows display, continuing her campaign to make Bozeman homes and gardens more bird friendly. We were also able to roll out our brand new booth materials! Special thanks to Glenniss Indreland for designing and researching our new tabling displays and to John Edwards for helping push it over the finish line.
The Raptor Counters saw a surprisingly high turnout of human visitors to the helipad, along with a total of 125 Golden Eagles, and 199 total raptors for the weekend.
It all started with the Friday evening kick-off event. There were about 200 in attendance, distanced throughout The Ellen Theatre. Biologist Wes Larson generously shared his film, Scouting 13 Million Sky Raptors, and spent extra time—along with Steve Hoffman and hawk watchers Evan Farese and Mia Cignoni—conversing with the audience.
Thanks to Steve Hoffman, whose contributions included an inspiring presentation Friday evening, raptor ID presentations Saturday and Sunday, and helping to man the Raptor Count Board. Thank you to Glenda Singer and John Ludin with the Ellen Theatre and to Bridger Bowl’s Erin O’Connor and Katie Lynch.
A special thank you to our dedicated volunteers for all their time and hard work. This festival would not happen without you all! Mary Schlosser, Dillon Potter, Leo Freeman, Hannah Allen, Hilmar Sauerwein, Peggy Osbourne, David Cole, Alicia Ochs, Nora Miller, Loreene Reid, Emma Narotzky, Chris Nixon, Travis Kidd, Paulette Epple, Lou Ann Harris, Beth Madden, Vicki Saab, Anne Ready, Aaron & Sonja Clausen, and Terri Narotzky. We appreciate you and hope to see you all again next fall!
