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…