Northern Harrier, Whitewater Draw

Heat wrinkles rose from the desert floor and the low winter sun took some sting out of the air, but a chilly wind was blowing.  When I spotted the female Northern Harrier, I jumped out of the truck without my jacket.  She appeared alone out of the east to patrol this part of her Chihuahuan Desert territory.  She was hungry and hunting. Somewhere near Whitewater Draw…well south of Tombstone…a day away from Tucson and touching Mexico, her territory could be a hundred miles long and hundred miles wide, but out here that’s still nowhere.

With hopes of surprising a bird, a mouse, a lizard or something equally delicious, she patrolled…low and slow, back and forth.  She may have been familiar with this section of desert because she repeated the same pattern several times, as if she’d been lucky here before.  This was not a casual flight, she was hungry…something needed to die today to satisfy her.   

Able to change direction instantly, she dropped down often, but came up empty quite often, too.  

She took some interest in my presence, but only casually. I felt I wasn’t interfering with her hunting and she seemed comfortable with our 400-foot separation. I was as close as I could expect to get.

Flying over foraging birds in the tall grass, she panicked the flock, but made no attempt to catch one.  A bird meal was not to her liking today.

Male Northern Harrier,
Christopher Columbus Park, Tucson
CORRECTION: From John O'Donnell, 
"It sure looks to me like you have a 
Peregrine Falcon
 perched in that telephone pole
 (vs. a male Northern Harrier)."
Thank you for the correction, John.

The male northern harrier looks considerably different than the female.  He has a grey head, white breast and is much lighter overall.  He’s smaller too.

After several passes over the tall grass directly in front of me, she spotted something…dipped down and came up lucky.  Flying away to dine in peace, she had a mouse…hardly a meal…maybe a snack…finally something.

Carefully watching her from behind was a Loggerhead Shrike.  Not foolish enough to steal from a Northern Harrier, he watched her as she struggled in the wind to hold on to both the branch and the mouse.  If there was to be a mouse fumble, I suspect the Loggerhead Shrike would try to recover it.

She carefully consumed Minnie Mouse…not a tidbit lost. But not satisfied by that tiny meal, she was off for another in minutes.   Displaying the distinctive white rump of all Northern Harriers as she left, she banked right into a cool desert breeze and lifted up out of sight. There had to be a bigger, fatter, more flavorful mouse out there somewhere.

Allan

Great-tailed Grackle

I noticed a couple at Christopher Columbus Park in Tucson because of a commotion.  A man, woman and child were feeding pretzels and croutons to the ducks in the lagoon. Some Great-tailed Grackles were present too and they were upset because they weren’t getting any.  The ducks could swim, but the grackles couldn’t.  I wasn’t interested in the ducks. I wanted the Great-tailed Grackles.

The man spotted me immediately and said, “Datt’sa big camera you got!”  Well, I’d been carrying it for several miles by then, so I knew he was right.  I acknowledged his observation without raising my head and kept shooting the grackles.  I didn’t want to be rude, but if they ran out of pretzels and croutons before I got my shots, I would run out of grackles.  The grackles weren’t there to pose for me!  They wanted something to eat, even if it was soggy pretzels and croutons.  The man and woman were big people, so luckily, they brought a big bag of ‘duck food’ and I was able to get all the angles I wanted.

Gregarious and noisy, Great-tailed Grackles form small flocks to forage.  They may be friends and flock-mates, but that doesn’t stop them from stealing from one another.  There was a lot of squabbling, intimidation and outright fighting among the grackles for the limited food, but after the croutons were gone they seemed to be friends again. 

Polygamous and promiscuous, there seems to be little concern in the bird literature as to their future.  Moving northward from Mexico over the past century, they now inhabit a large portion of the Southwest.  We don’t have Great-tailed Grackles in Wisconsin yet, but there is little reason to believe we won’t someday.

We have the Common Grackle, a smaller cousin in the same family.  The Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, including all of Florida, host the closely related Boat-tailed Grackle. The three sub-species are not known to interbreed. They're not having trouble surviving though.  In the non-breeding season, large flocks can become agricultural pests. There seems to be no need to feed them pretzels and croutons.

Allan
January 10, 2012