The day before we had the good fortune of stumbling across the Green-tailed Towhee (finally got it posted: https://flic.kr/p/2iXd6GP), Dave and I had been cruising other remote Kittitas locations and, toward the end of the day, found ourselves on Umptanum Rd. It was getting toward dusk, yet the Vesper Sparrows were still singing like crazy. We had seen a male Northern Harrier earlier and then realized one was perched only 50 m or so off the road, in a low sagebrush. While we were observing the Vespers, the Harrier left its perch and began a sky-dance, an acrobatic series of vertical ascents and dives, sometimes in corkscrew fashion, sometimes with barrel rolls in the dive. It was then we noticed that a female Harrier had taken its place on the sagebrush perch. The male continued its dance by another series of less steep ascents and dives, making a couple of circular circuits of several hundred meters around the area of the female while continuing these maneuvers. Finally, the male swooped to the ground, out of our line of sight, then emerged carrying a small rodent. It flew past the female, who then launched into flight, following the male. They made several lazy circles, often close together, for many minutes. Then, as if previously choreographed, the male dropped the rodent and the female snatched it in mid-air in a smooth hand-off. The two went off together, presumably to a nest site already picked out by the male. A few minutes later, the male returned to a more normal harrier-like cruise, until a Short-eared Owl appeared (to be continued).

Scott Ramos
Seattle