Welcome back to the Sunday edition of WildKnife Photography! This week I wanted to share a couple of wonderful encounters I had with raptors over the summer.
Raptors are larger carnivorous birds that hunt and kill other animals for food. Some raptors are hunting specialists such as osprey who hunt fish. Others specialize in hunting birds and many raptors are generalist hunters who hunt a variety of prey.
The little one in the first two photos is a Merlin. I’m pretty confident it is either a female or juvenile taiga Merlin. Merlin are smaller raptors, bigger than a robin but smaller than a crow. The taiga Merlin migrates from its northern breeding grounds to the coastal and southern U.S. and as far south as Ecuador!
Merlins hunt small birds such as sparrows, shorebirds, but will also hunt dragonflies, nestlings, bats, and small mammals. When I spotted this bird, she was perched in a tree on the tip of a peninsula in downtown Yellowknife. This particular lake, Niven Lake, is a favourite of local birders. There are a number of song and shorebird species that breed in the area. This raptor was likely after a snack of duckling as there were plenty of unsupervised youngsters floating about in the weedy shallows beneath her. I snapped a few shots of her during a walk at lunch mid-July. She didn’t let me get too close however and she flew off to perch somewhere else.
The last weekend of August I was sitting out in my back yard watching the little birds. Suddenly there is a bunch of screeching alarm calls and they scatter. I spot something large flapping around at the base of the bushy willow tree and at first I thought it was a robin or crow stuck in there. Turned out it was this juvenile sharp-shinned hawk! She flew out of the tree and perched on the telephone wires to survey the yard for more prey. After a short rest, she flew after another small bird headed straight for my head (and living room window) before turning abruptly in mid-air and flying off. It was quite exciting to say the least!
During the non-breeding season sharp-shinned hawks will hunt small birds and mammals along forest edges and sometimes at backyard bird feeders. This explains all the high-pitched alarm calls. Female Sharp-shinned Hawks are about a third bigger and heavier than males which leads me to believe this visitor was a female.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s story. I’ll be back next week with more adventures and photos.