The Howland
Picture Pages: Northern Harrier The Howland
Picture Pages: Northern HarrierPage by Royce
Last update: $Date: 2004/02/09 02:23:06 $ (UTC)
The Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) is a medium sized raptor common around marshes and wetlands throughout North America. We have seen them locally in Alberta, as well as some of the birding locations we have visited in the U.S. including the Bosque del Apache and Parker River National Wildlife Refuges. This is a particularly acrobatic bird of prey, and thus even though we have sighted them many times it has proven difficult to get any decent photos.
Well, never mind -- it's always good just to see these low-flying hunters skim by low over the ground, perhaps to dive suddenly after some prey that they have seen or heard. A key tell-tale that you're looking at a Harrier is to look for a flash of white rump feathers.
Resources where you can find out more:
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Saturday morning, January 24, 2004, I was at a favorite spot in Englewood, Colorado (a southern 'burb of Denver) -- the "duck pond" near a client's office. While many of the usual suspects were there on the pond, although in reduced winter numbers, I got an unexpected treat as shown in this photo. My apologies for the extra-tall image, but I wanted to show the full height as captured to give a better sense of the scene. For a good two minutes or so, a Prairie Falcon and a Northern Harrier engaged in a dogfight (falconfight?) over a kill that ultimately had to be credited to the Prairie Falcon. The Harrier dominated the high position, while the Falcon -- no doubt concentrating firmly on brunch -- staid down low. The Falcon made numerous passes over the grass just to the left, off the photo, going after what was probably a mouse. For the first several passes, the Falcon was driven off by the Harrier dive-bombing in to try to snatch the prey at the last second. Ultimately the Falcon successfully snagged the little critter destined to become its snack, and flew off to the right over the water with the Harrier still winging in once or twice from above. See the next photo for the next stage of the story.
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Still a poor photo of the Northern Harrier pictured above, but it's a good story. After chasing the Prairie Falcon for awhile trying to horn in on the kill, both raptors ended up perched on the same fence line, a few posts apart. Here the Harrier looks (hungrily?) at the Prairie Falcon, which was making short work of its prey. Finally realizing that no left-overs would be forthcoming, the Harrier flew off to try its hand (or claw) again elsewhere. For the second chapter of this story, see the Prairie Falcon page. This photo was taken with a digiscoping setup. Part of the reason the shot is poor is that the distance was considerable -- likely close to 200 meters. Consequently I was shooting with greater camera zoom than I normally would. This impacts image quality with the digiscoping setup in use by inducing fuzziness. Normally I try not to zoom the camera to more than 19mm or so to keep images sharp (assuming I get the focus right, that is). This photo was retouched somewhat in Photoshop Elements (auto color balance and brightness boost) and ThumbsPlus (contrast and saturation boost, and unsharp mask gaussian).
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(click image for larger photo) |
On the second morning of our first visit to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (see our Bosque del Apache page), we didn't have a lot of time since we needed to hit the road to move on to the next leg of our trip. But we wanted to catch the lift-off of the Snow Geese and so we got out to a good spot prior to first light, arriving around 7:00 AM. How did we know the spot was a good spot? Because a couple of dozen other bird watchers and photographers were out there too. The Snow Geese lifted off as hoped, a truly amazing sight. We stood there for a few minutes more to see what might develop, and this Northern Harrier came swooping by low over the marsh grasses, no doubt searching for breakfast. The light still was more like twilight, and I hadn't adjusted white balance or exposure settings on the camera at all. But I snapped a couple of frames of the fast-moving raptor anyway, just before it dove into the grass. This image came out in sepia tones, the Harrier silhouetted with its characteristic white rump feathers and wings cocked in shallow, inverted V's. I thought the unintended effect was interesting.
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