Late-Season Raptors

The raptor wonderland along the lower Santa Cruz River is usually winding down by late February, and this year is no exception; in a full morning along the river between Marana and Red Rock, Lori and I found hawk numbers relatively low. But the quality was there.

Our two Ferruginous Hawks included one stunning black bird and a light-morph juvenile with a broad dark tail-band, raising hopes for a split second of that other feathery-footed buteo. As usual Red-tailed Hawk was the most abundant raptor; among them was a single dark-morph adult.

A fine surprise was two Peregrine Falcon adults perched in the same tree at the Marana Pecan Grove, one big, one small; perhaps they were eyeing the crags of the Silverbells and the dove flocks on the fields, breeding on their minds.

Northern Harriers were always in sight, some of them high above the river and moving north on what was probably the first good migration day of the spring for them. One male gave us the most dramatic sight of the day, when he suddenly broke off his slow quartering of the field to dive at a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched on the ground; the hawk was on a male Red-winged Blackbird, which took advantage of its attacker’s being attacked to high-tail it away. The sharpy landed in a pecan tree and sulked, the harrier went back to the unending search for cotton rats, and the red-wing was last seen on the eastern horizon moving fast!