Hi Carol & all,
Thanks to you & Jamie for the fun report!
Prairie Falcons are a sparse but regular wintering species in the
mid-Willamette Valley. Especially on the Linn County side of the
Willamette, it's not unheard of to find two within a couple of miles ...
though still definitely fun to see!
For several years back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Davis Rd. (SW
of Tangent) was a place where birders would often see two Prairie
falcons perched in isolated trees, not more than a mile apart. The
preferred locations seem to change gradually, over time scales that
probably correspond to the lifetimes of individual falcons.
There's some lore among falconers and birders that nearly all of our
wintering Prairie Falcons are of a single gender (females if I have the
story right). So going on that, you probably didn't see a pair, but just
two birds wintering independently, not far apart. My hunch is that the
birds that you saw probably wouldn't even like each other very much, if
they got any closer than half a mile!
Happy birding,
Joel
On Wed, 2015-11-11 at 16:27 -0800, Carol wrote:
Birding buddy Jamie Boulton and I drove around the grass fields east of
Albany
this afternoon. Aside from the usual Harriers, Red Tails and Kestrels, we
found a
Prairie Falcon just north of the intersection where Brownsville Road turns
into Sand
Ridge Road. There was a Rough Legged Hawk in the same area. Driving on, we
encountered two more Rough Legged Hawks and then a second Prairie Falcon in a
tree
at 1260 Parker Road around 3:45. The first falcon had a very white breast and
smooth
feathers, whereas the second one was a bit disheveled looking with a darker
breast,
so we are positive it was not the same bird, although they were found about
1/2 mile
apart from each other. A possible pair? Awesome day.
Carol Hiler
N. Albany
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