This was the second most exciting part of my Brushy Peak visit with the owl guru the other day, although it was kind of a delayed excitement. There was a lot going on at one particular time: Sharon was geeking out about the shrike and I was looking at a golden eagle, and there were all these birds flying about, so I was snapping pictures left and right. Finally, Sharon asked if I had gotten any pictures of “the bird flying to our right” a few minutes back. I said I wasn’t sure which one she meant and scrolled back through my pictures, stopping to ask her if she meant a pretty bad picture I had of a lone bird. She said yes, and that she thought it might have been a prairie falcon. Again, I have no idea how she sees these birds either very far away or for only a brief second, and manages to ID them. I took the pictures and had NO IDEA it was a prairie falcon – I’d have considered myself lucky if I had even salvaged the photos when I got home and managed to ID it there. She had me pretty well convinced after examining the photo in the field but we didn’t officially call it until I got home and cleaned the pictures up a little bit. However, this was really great because although the pictures are bad, this was my first prairie falcon seen in the wild! And I’m partial to prairie falcons because at Sulphur Creek Nature Center, one of the wildlife hospitals I volunteer at, I work closely with our two resident falcons, a peregrine and a prairie, and whenever I walk near their shared enclosure they both spread their wings and do an extremely endearing happy dance…because they think I’m coming to feed them. This was a relationship I had to earn because they are both high-stress birds and don’t immediately warm up to people. The prairie falcon has actually come to trust me enough that she will let me stand inches from her while she eats, which is very unusual for her.
Anyway, bad photos of a prairie falcon in Brushy Peak:
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