Photos taken in Oliver, BC — May 23, 2020
If you’re a mouse or a vole, this fellow is the last thing you want to see cruising above your meadow. The Northern Harrier is a fearsome predator, using both vision and hearing to track its prey. And as the provider for his mate and offspring — sometimes more than one mate and several offspring — he’s highly motivated to bring home the rodent bacon. I didn’t see what he eventually caught, but I’m fully confident he did it soon after I took these photos.
* Why I didn’t post it: I shot these photos very early in the morning, practically in blue hour. As a result, I used a high ISO and they came out a little noisy. The shame of posting a noisy photo was just too much to bear…I feared I’d be chucked off Instagram, consigned to peddling my photos on street corners, begging passersby to please sir, please madam, look at my hawk photo. I hope that won’t happen. Will it?
* I took a lot of photos in 2020, more than in any previous year. Some I shared, but looking back I’ve found many I didn’t. Maybe I thought they weren’t good enough, maybe I had something else to post or maybe…I just plain forgot. As the year winds down I’m rectifying those oversights and posting some photos I overlooked earlier in 2020.
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