I have also seen a photo of a Northern Harrier feeding on a dead Wigeon on a frozen lake. I am assuming that the Harrier didn't kill the wigeon itself.

Jeff Kozma
Yakima

j kozma at charter dot net.


----- Original Message -----
From: Dennis Paulson
To: Tweeters
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] northern harrier eating a starling, Olympia


Robin Baird asked about Northern Harriers eating carrion.


I photographed a female harrier munching on a road-kill Eastern Cottontail Rabbit near Keystone on Whidbey Island a few years ago. Every time a car came by, it flew, but then it would come right back to the rabbit. It would be interesting to come up with a list of hawks that don't eat carrion.


And in response to the sighting of a harrier taking a Song Sparrow a while back, I've always thought that harriers ate a lot of birds, even though rodents may be their primary prey. I flushed a harrier off a Black-bellied Plover carcass in Florida that seemed fresh enough that I decided the harrier may well have killed it, and I've seen them going after shorebirds on a number of occasions, but small passerines of meadows are probably their most common avian prey.

-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net








------------------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters