Raptors

At the Cottage Collective, there are six silhouettes of some of the raptors we have here in Colorado.  The funnest part of this is that people of all ages can measure themselves alongside the birds' wings to see how big their "wingspan" is! Those six birds are the Eastern Screech Owl, Kestrel, Peregrine Falcon, Red-Tailed Hawk, Turkey Vulture, and the Bald Eagle. 

Wingspans of The Raptors

• The Eastern Screech Owl has a wingspan of 18-24 inches, which is about 1.5 feet. 

• The Kestrel has a wingspan of 20-32 inches, which is about 2.5 feet. 

• The Peregrine Falcon has a wingspan of 30-48 inches, which is about 3.3 feet. 

• The Red-Tailed Hawk has a wingspan of 41-57 inches, which is about 4.5 feet. 

• The Turkey Vulture has a wingspan of 72 inches, or 6 feet!

• The Bald Eagle has a wingspan of about 72-90 inches (6-7.5 feet), but they could get up to 8 feet!

For my Silver Award, in Girl Scouts, I partnered with the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program to help them gather information for other people to learn more about them. At the Cottage, we also wanted to paint a mural showing the abundance of Raptors we have in Colorado. It's one of the things we're known for! The volunteers had a lot of great ideas but I eventually liked the idea of just doing something so people can have fun and it could be interactive for everyone! We took our inspiration from other organizations that dealt with animals and birds and saw they had a cute "What's your wingspan?" board. I loved that and wanted to do something similar.

What do you do If you find an Injured Raptor? An information brochure is below.  

True story:  Heather and her friends found an injured raptor in the bushes on July 31 in Loveland.  We called the Hotline number below in her brochure and it was picked up.  Unfortunately, it had too many injuries and didn't make it.

To learn more about each of Colorado's raptors, click whichever bird you would like to learn about!