[Tweeters] The owl and the harrier

[Michael Price]

As we watch a harrier flopping seemingly listlessly over the marsh,  we can
easily fall into underestimating it. I certainly did. It took a face-off
between a harrier and a stonking-big gyrfalcon to change my mind.

The place was the Martindale Flats in North Saanich, on the Saanich
Peninsula north of Victoria BC. The time sometime in the early 1980s and
Mike Force and I had met Mike Shepherd and a few other Victoria birders
whose names I am, sorry to say, no longer able to recall. We were chasing a
gyrfalcon reported hanging about the flats for that winter. We spotted it,
studied it, revelled in the sighting (my second-ever, and by far my
closest),  and watched it suddenly rise up and start tooling off toward a
cottonwood copse at the SE corner of the field. They may not look it, but
in level flight, boy howdy, gyrfalcons can cover real estate seriously
quickly. The copse was right beside a side-road. Pile in the cars, boys.

The gyr's interest was hijacking a female harrier's kill. The harrier had
taken it into the copse to feed undisturbed. Good luck with that. The gyr
had landed on the ground about ten feet away. When we all got there, they
were standing a few feet apart staring at each other. What happened next is
the part you'd disbelieve except there were credible witnesses.

The gyrfalcon literally stood up as tall as it could reach and strutted
menacingly toward the harrier until they were until about an inch apart
then they each rose until they were at their maximum standing heights,
literally chest-to-chest glaring and daring each other. I almost laughed
out loud: I've seen guys in bars doing this kind of "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!
wachoo gonna do about it?" routine a hundred times.

Here's the thing. The harrier stared the gyr down. After a minute, the gyr
suddenly remembered a previous appointment and backed away, figuring honor
had been served, and took off.

And, me, I have never taken harriers for granted since.



best, m
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