Saltfleet ON. March 8 2020. There’s a stretch of country road I sometimes visit known by the birding fraternity as a favoured place to look for shrikes and owls in winter, early meadowlarks and Upland Sandpipers in spring and mockingbirds at other odd times.
This bird-lovers’ road crosses from one gentle limestone ridge to another and the lands in between are uncultivated either because they are poorly drained or desperately dry. The landscape is scarred by the road in question, a single-track railway line, an ugly angular drainage ditch, a deep, active limestone quarry and two disused quarries one filled with water the other now an abandoned garbage dump.
Oddly, all of this makes for a mix of conditions that favour (but not guarantee) certain birds. I have passed this way a few times in past weeks and noted a pair of American Kestrels hanging around. Perhaps they’ll choose to nest somewhere close by, but so far I think their hanging around is more of a precursor to courtship. They spend a lot of time on prominent perches especially roadside utility lines and are wary of people, particularly it seems, of my slow, camera-ready approach. Every time my car rolls into their I-don’t-like-the-look-of-that zone they take flight dropping down and swooping away to a new perch some distance away. It is not a competition I’m likely to win.
But I’ve enjoyed watching them through binoculars, and have tried for photos although their shyness makes it difficult. However, I was lucky to get two in quick succession of a male hovering and examining the ground below for a meal of vole, snake or mouse.
And the rest are of various males at various other times over the years.
lovely to read, and my imagination is sparked.
Just saw Biggest Little Farm and some of the raptor footage is stunning, but most of the film is that way. I was thinking of you as the hawk was swooping down on a hapless starling.