JLRosso at aol.com writes:
> Serge wrote about a pair of Harriers:
> The prey the male had in its talons was a small passerine. When the male
> opened its talon, the passerine flew away!!!
>
> I'm trying to imagine what the female Harrier's reaction was to the male
> Harrier's offering of food. Thats a great story.

I'm not sure I understand your point here.
Male of many (all?) species of Harriers do offer food to their mate during
courtship and "Harlings" breeding:
The male usually flies higher than the female.
At some point the female turns on her back and the male opens his
talons (I'm not sure in precisely which order these two events occur).
The female usually catches the prey in less than two seconds.

It is worth being noted that the usual Harrier preys are rodents, which
have much more difficulty to fly away than a passerine :-)
When I saw this, I was just stunned, and none of my fellow birders in
Brittany I spoke with (some of them have quite a long experience in
birding) has ever seen such a thing.
I don't know the importance of birds in Marsh Harriers _Circus blablabla_
diet, but I guess it's no more than 5-10%.


--
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A bird in the bush is better than two in the hand.

Serge Le Huitouze Intelligent Software Group
email: serge at cs.sfu.ca School of Computing Science
tel: (604) 291-5423 Simon Fraser University
fax: (604) 291-3045 Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6 CANADA
http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~serge/