Northern Harrier In Wash Brook Parcel

 

On November 5th, Landham Brook Marsh Conservation Area proved to be great birding location again. I was hiking with my dad, not really expecting to find anything. We were in a rush, and I also just tend to find more stuff when I'm hiking by myself. We followed the riverbank, and just as we passed the cluster of trees that I had seen the red tailed hawks in, I noticed a bird gliding upstream. I whipped out the camera and found a clear spot to get photos. It's wings were very narrow, like an osprey or a falcon, but it was brown. This was a bird I had never seen before. When it turned around and started flying back downstream. I realized it was a female northern harrier. We had a time crunch, so I couldn't stay to photograph it for too long. 

Because of a family emergency, I couldn't get any real time in the marsh for another 5 days. I came back on November 10th, after school. At first, I didnt see anything. I walked up and down along the trail that I had seen the harrier on on the 5th. Earlier in that hike, I had seen a harrier quickly gliding through the woods, so I knew they were in the area. I eventually decided to start walking out into the marsh, on top of the dense mats of dead grasses that filled the area.

                             There were a few beaver lodges scattered along Landham Brook:

    Broadleaf cattails were beginning to shed their fluffy seedheads. This will continue throughout the winter. Cattail seeds provide food for American goldfinches and chickadees.

     After a while, a dark silhouette flew low over my head. Less than 20 feet away. The same female was back. By the time i could react, and start taking photos, she had already crossed the marsh, and was hunting in the cattails near the opposite riverbank...

Even though harriers are diurnal, they rely mainly on their sense of hearing to find their prey: voles. I actually ran into a few voles myself, stirred up when I trampled through the tall grass. Not relying only on sight also means that they can hunt for later in the evening.

The sun was setting as I was taking the photos. Every time she dove into the grass for prey, I completely lost track of it, but would recognize her white mark at the base of her tail again, which contrasted the dim, grey treeline. Once the sun was really down, all I could make out with my naked eye was a little white dot hovering around in the distance:

At around 4:10pm, i lost track of it for almost 15 minutes, and had assumed it had retreated into the woods, to roost for the night, but as I turned around to head back, I realized it was not flying around behind me:

I lost track of it again, and then found it again back where it started. It was still circling around. I took a very shaky video. In the original, it was longer, and included an unsuccessful dive into the reeds for prey, but when I tried to trim it down to a size that blogger allows me to upload, I could only trim the beginning of the video out, not the end. I ended up with only a bit from the end of the clip, that shows the her soaring very low, characteristic of harriers, back and forth near the opposite riverbank.

The sun by this point had completely set, and after a few minutes, I couldn't even spot the white spot on her tail, so I called it a day.

That was the last time I saw the harrier though, because on November 11th, The weather started to get worse, meaning warm rain, thick clouds, and high humidity, which makes harriers less active.