This is a male Northern Harrier.  The females are more brown.  You can see nice comparisons at this website and my picture below.

He was so unimpressed by my presence.  I was able to get about 10 feet away before he took off.

He has a really neat skin tab on the front of his beak.

But what I really like is the bright yellow foot.

And look at these gorgeous cattails.

The cattails were in various stages of unravelling.

The grass and open spaces provide a perfect environment for raptors.  There were American Kestrals and Northern Harriers everywhere.  I was very proud of my birding skills because I spotted a teeny tiny bird in the picture below.

Can you see her?  She’s to the right of the sonar device.  Now mind you, I have spent 20 minutes staring at a piece of driftwood, thinking it’s a duck, so my birding skills are not always this good.  Here is a close-up of the Northern Harrier.

Their heads look like owls to me.  The specific contours of their faces are supposed to help them hunt using sound.  I was really surprised to find the one below sitting on the ground.  Usually raptors require perches and the harrier was next to a series of perches but still chose the ground.

Don’t they have owl faces?

Northern Harriers find their food by flying in circles while low to the ground.  We saw a lot of swooping.  The picture below shows grey underparts, which is the coloring for male Northern Harriers.

Females have more brown underneath their wings as you can see in the picture below.

At one point we were standing along a river.  There was a male kestral looking for food and a female kestral sitting in a tree preening.  A Northern Harrier began to search for food near the kestrals.

She was moving along the trees with the mountains behind her.

Then she passed near the female kestral who you can see in the top left corner.

The kestrals were very upset at the harrier’s intrusion and began dive-bombing her.  Now kestrals are very small falcons.  Their length ranges between 8 and 11 inches.  The Northern Harrier, on the other hand, is up to 22 inches long.  But the two of them succeeded in chasing her off their land.  It was quite a site!

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I’ll be going back to this area next month in the hopes of finding those Bald Eagles.