Page 1 of 1

Northern Harrier 1 Turtle Dove No Score

Posted: April 7th, 2015, 6:10 pm
by Colino
Some backyard drama happened this afternoon. We heard a loud thump on the window and when my wife looked it was our old buddy the Northern Harrier. This old bird has been around quite a few years and he has learned to panic small birds causing them to fly into the south windows of our house. I think the birds believe the windows are an opening that they can use to get away from the Harrier. It never ends well for them and they are then easily picked up by the Harrier after colliding with the window pane. We have seen the Harrier do this on numerous occasions with Sparrows and Starlings but never anything as big as a Dove which is what he killed today. For the last 5 years I've noticed a pair of Turtle Doves that migrate through our yard every spring and fall. I believe the poor creature was one of those and this is really unusual because according to all the info I can find Turtle Doves shouldn't even be around here. The picture below shows him proudly holding his prey after laboriously dragging it away from the house where he found us to be too close. He later dragged it farther and spent the best part of an hour plucking and devouring as much as he could. I will go out and see what is left after he leaves.
harrier.jpg