Mating season for backyard raptors

Prairie Falcon photo by Ned Harris

This morning we watched an aerial ballet high in the sky above our backyard. A falcon was soaring, but with his feet hanging down, then banking, spreading his tail feathers, diving a little, catching himself again...I first thought that it was a Kestrel hunting insects. But when Randy brought my binoculars I recognized it as a bigger bird, a Prairie Falcon. He kept circling, diving and banking for more than 5 minutes and was finally joined by his partner. They circled together and then sped up towards Panther Peak.

 We don't seem to have an American Kestrel pair in our saguaro this year, but we sometimes hear  mating calls and see the male fly over. They are probably nesting in the State Land to the north.

Our Dark Female, the Red-tailed Hawk, has flown over a couple of time too, and now she is settling in the Saguaro nest that she used two years ago, she seems to alternate nests regularly. Both sites are along a wash in the state land, only about 300 feet apart.

Great Horned Owls are hooting at night from the Twin Peak on the east side of our land. We found a dead one this winter, but there must be a resident pair again.
 We also found a dead adult Harris Hawk. We have no power lines here that could electrocute them. I hope they aren't dying from an environmental poison. High in the food chain, raptors are always at risk.   

The Cooper's Hawks are also getting territorial. For the first time ever I saw the female go very aggressively after a juvenile Red-tail that likes to hang around.
We also have a ghost, a silver grey male Northern Harrier, but he only visits regularly every winter and then disappears for the breeding season.
With all those raptors getting ready to breed, we are hoping for enough rain to keep the land green and productive. But does the next storm have to hit right during my next art show in Dove Mountain? On my birthday???

Mating Season for Urban Raptors

Old Main of the University of Arizona

It's spring break. The campus of the University of Arizona is eerily quiet for this week. But every morning when I pass the big old pines framing 'Old Main' I am startled by a crescendo of loud, nasal bird calls.
Today I watched as a small male Cooper's Hawk carried his prey first to the trees at the fountain, listening to his mates impatient  'gna-gna-gna-gna-gna' call, stepping from one foot to the other and waving his bent neck indecisively from left to right.

Then he finally flew across my head to join his mate on a big branch right in front of the windows of the Social Sciences building.  Impressive how much larger the female is! By the time I finally remembered that I was packing (a camera) today, the prey had already changed owners and the little male was about to go hunting again. The female devoured every bite of the gift and had no objections to my filming.

Again, the flickr quality is much better, so please click here to see her feast.


This courtship feeding obviously plays a role in the bonding of the pair. It also allows the female to judge the hunting capabilities of her mate. This will soon be very important when she is tied to the nest for laying and incubating the eggs and also later when she stays with the young nestlings to feed them the prey that the male has to deliver.  Only when the nestlings are quite grown does the female start hunting again - and then she goes for much larger prey than the male.

Now I'm hoping to observe these two nest on campus. They will have to deal with much more traffic when the students are back, but I remember an Osprey pair on the U of Florida campus in Gainesville, that every year raised their young successfully. Of course, their nest was guarded by the  campus pond gator.