Portia is a beautiful female red tailed hawk who returned with her mate to nest in the Cariboo Heights Forest this spring. We first saw her in early spring of 2019 when she and her mate were renovating an old nest in the Cariboo Heights Forest.
She is notable because she has orange wing bands with white lettering “V/0”. After a bit of investigation we learned that Portia was born in
Oregon in 2014 and then captured and banded at the Oregon airport in May, 2015. She was relocated to NE Oregon but returned to the airport in spring of 2016. Again, she was relocated but then wasn’t seen again. Somehow she made her way to Burnaby and discovered the secret forest!
Portia and her mate were unsuccessful in raising a chick in 2019. This may have been due to the heavy harassment by mobs of local crows.
This year, Portia and her mate operated in stealth mode — silently flying into the nest to deliver food and successfully avoided the crows attention. These efforts paid off! At the beginning of June we saw a chick!
By June 14, the chick was stretching its wings on windy days to strengthen its flight muscles and moving around a lot in the nest. We last saw the chick on June 18 and hope that it fledged successfully!
