The next morning – the beginning of the fourth day with no sign of the female from the Valentine’s Day Pair (see Notes from the Field, 22 April 2013) started off gloomy. Dark clouds rolled across the sky and the weather ranged from heavy down pours to just raining really hard.I had decided that this would be a good day to catch up on office work, updating field notes and data entry, mainly.I had been working for a about an hour or so when a break in the weather finally came.About twenty minutes later my phone started ringing. It was Henry, one of the guards working in Cap Cana within the Valentine’s Day Pair’s territory. “Estoy mirando los dos gavilanes,” he told me. He was seeing two hawks! I quickly gathered my gear – my binoculars andtheradio telemetry receiver wrapped in as many plastic bags as I could find to keep it dry (it had started raining again) – and headed out to the site

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The sky was clear except for a few expansive clouds tinged pink by the rays of the rising sun. Egrets lazily flew by overhead, their great wings flapping golden in the early morning light. It was early and the air was cool and light, heavy only with the faint scent of the ocean tagging along on the tail end of an occasional breeze. The grass was green, the palm trees waved whenin thewind and the bougainvillea bloomed bright fuchsia. It seemed like a perfect day here in Dominican Republic, and it almost was, except for one nagging detail. This was going on the third day that we hadn’t seen the female, ND, from the Valentine’s Day Pair (see Notes from the Field, 20 March 2013).Up until a few days ago, she was regularly seen side by side with male AN as they worked together to build their nest, perched together, or fed together.Since ND’s radio transmitter wasn’t functioning, I had no way to track her so for two days I kept a close eye on AN. I hoped he would lead me to her, but he was always alone and often vocalizing loudly, as if calling for her. He never received a reply.

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I had the immense pleasure of sharing ten days with Steve Lewis and other exceptional people during our inaugural African Raptor Safari in Kenya. For a 72-year old man, Steve looked no more than 58 and exuded passion, enthusiasm and a zest to enjoy life and nature. I invited Steve to write about his experiences in the field with me and am privileged to be able to share this on our website. Munir Virani

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Cassin’s Hawk Eagle is not a bird on my radar. It is primarily a central and West African forest raptor.There is very little known about it.It does not appear in the Kenyan field guide and regional guides show its eastern-most reach as the forests of extreme western Ugandan.So imagine my glee when African raptor guru Simon Thomsett called to inform me that our ‘bird’ was a juvenile Cassin’s Hawk Eagle!‘You are NOT serious!’, I said.Simon assured me he was and that he was 100% certain of the identification.Further confirmation came from another African raptor guru, Rob Davies.

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For the past three field seasons, Christine and Thomas Hayes and I have been working on The Peregrine Fund's Ridgway's Hawk Conservation Project. Ridgway's Hawks are a critically endangered species with the only known breeding population found in a small national park in Dominican Republic. Christine and Thomas spend about 6 months of the year in-country monitoring the wild pairs in Los Haitises National Park and helping with releases of young birds. Since 2008 The Peregrine Fund has been releasing young wild birds into protected areas in the hopes of creating additional self-sustaining populations. For the first time, two of our released birds have paired up and are making a nesting attempt. What follows is Christine' account of her observations of this exciting moment in our project's history!

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