Once on the brink of extinction, Yosemite’s iconic peregrine falcons are now thriving thanks to the cooperation of climbers. No longer endangered, the number of peregrine breeding pairs has skyrocketed from just eight in 2009 to 17 today, all thanks to a 15 year collaborative recovery scheme involving climbers, the National Park Service and the […]
Tag: falcon
Spoonbills at Cley
We headed to Cley this morning quickly ticking the five Temminck’s Stints before moving on to the Eastbank where we found another year tick with nine Little Terns sitting on Arnold’s Marsh. A Little Stint was reported but we failed to find it. Back in the car and we noticed four Spoonbill flying over Walsey […]
Small guests at the Giant’s Castle table
The vulture’s hide at Giant’s Castle is a raptor hide first and foremost. The setting on the edge of a middleberg ridge is spectacular. Placing the bones for the raptors, mainly for the Bearded Vultures, supplements their natural food sources which is diminishing due to loss of habitat and is the main purpose of the […]
Review: Bird Sense: What it’s Like to be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead
Who’d be a bird anyway? Chickens have bi-focal vision: one eye for the close-up work of pecking seed; one for the fox on the horizon or the hawk in the sky. Peregrine falcons don’t swoop directly on prey – as the crow flies, to coin a phrase – but in a wide arc, using the […]
Windhover Woes
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding high there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing. “ The year of 1877 saw the placing of pen to paper and the creation of “the Windhover” […]
Summer time
Shachar Shalev (ourKiwi representative) has gone birding over the weekend and the following report shows that it is neverboringaround here. When there are few migrants, there is plenty of time to enjoy some of the region’s very interesting species… I Went out 5:30 in the morning not seriously expecting to find anything. I Started at […]
Ross’s Geese at Klamath National WIldlife Area, Miller Island Unit
A few weeks ago I took a ride up to the California/Oregon border to visit the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex. You can read my posts on two of these refuges over at the Wildlife Conservation Stamp website. This state wildlife area is just south of the town of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and is […]
Drama at Oe
This morning at Oe I observed a Peregrine Falcon consistently attack an Eurasian Bittern. Although the falcon gained height and swooped down on a few occasions, it never actually “hit” the bittern – it kept breaking off its attack just before striking. I can only surmise that as it had lost the advantage of surprise, […]