Northern Harriers Battle over a Mallard

Occasionally we have brutally cold winters here in northern Utah.  It’s my opinion that unusually cold temperatures when combined with thick crusted snow gives harriers little access to their staple food around here – voles.  Survival then becomes tenuous for the harriers and they’re forced to move on to other food sources like small birds, dead carp and waterfowl.   When a large meal like a carp or duck is available many harriers often fight over the food item and they do so with ferocity.   During less stressful times of the year I often see these birds skirmish but then it almost seems like a playful interlude that they do simply for “fun”.   Not so when it’s very cold and food is scarce – then it’s deadly serious and incredibly interesting to observe and photograph. First, a disclaimer.  Some of the photos I’ll present here would wither under the scrutiny of critique because of cut off or clipped wings, missing eyes or heads, lack of catch lights and difficult and rapidly changing lighting conditions.  My intent here is to show the behavior with the best images I have but some of them do have obvious flaws.  The calm before the storm I didn’t see harriers make this Mallard kill but it was still fresh when I came across this bird on the duck.  At first I though I’d simply be photographing the harrier calmly enjoying its meal but I was very mistaken.   Thinking about challenging the larger bird for the meal It didn’t take long for other birds to challenge her for the Mallard.  Some were timid…

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Northern Harrier Males – “Grey Ghosts”

The degree of sexual dimorphism (the condition in which males and females of a species are morphologically different) in Northern harriers is exceptional among birds of prey.  Many raptors are sexually dimorphic in size (see my “Great Horned Owls on the Farm” post) but Northern Harrier males and females are distinctly different in both size and color.    Adult female Northern Harrier This bird is a juvenile female, identified by the mostly solid rufous chest and dark eye.  The adult female would look much the same but with a streaked breast and a lighter colored eye.   By weight, females are about 50% heavier than males.  Both sexes have the distinctive white rump patch that is so difficult to photograph without blowing the whites.       Adult male Northern Harrier Adult males are gray above, much lighter below and have black wing tips.   And their bright yellow eyes are quite distinctive.       Adult male hunting Juvenile birds of both sexes resemble the female in plumage color so relatively few adult males are seen and photographed.  For this reason mature males have long been referred to as “Grey Ghosts”.       Perched adult male Whether perched or in flight many believe the adult male harrier to be one of the most beautiful raptors.    Adult male flying past Phragmites  Eye color in the males can vary from orange-yellow to lemon yellow.  At times they’re so bright that some folks after seeing my images have thought that I had increased their saturation for effect during image processing.  I hadn’t and I don’t.    …

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