I’d been waiting for the moment. As my friend Jim and I worked our way up the central path from the Pole Farm parking lot, I looked to my left and spotted a big blob far across the field.
Sitting atop a small tree was a Northern harrier, as I quickly concluded by looking through my binoculars. Jim and I each zoomed out our camera lenses to take a few shots.
If there’s a signature bird at the Pole Farm, it’s the Northern harrier. These migrants spent roughly half the year hunting in Mercer Meadows, and the harbingers of fall migration typically show up in the last week of August or the first week of September.
My sighting wasn’t the first, as I had seen two e-Bird reports recently. But it was still a good feeling on a pleasant, sunny Saturday morning.
More harriers are sure to arrive in the coming weeks, and the next big event will be the arrival of the male “gray ghost” harrier.
Today had more fun in store. As Jim and I headed out from the parking lot around 8 a.m., an immature bald eagle flew overhead. We’d see a mature eagle circling high overhead on our walk back to the car.
In between, we got a brief but good look at a beautiful female American redstart at the old AT&T Building One site. She flew off before I could pull up my camera, but her striking yellow plumage remains clear in memory.
Nearby, we saw a pair of Northern flickers at the top a tree as well as several Eastern kingbirds and a cedar waxwing cavorting, also up high.
We watched an Eastern wood pewee doing sorties off a tree branch to snag whatever bugs were flying about. I got a few decent shots but had even better luck yesterday afternoon when I made a quick, 45-minute visit to the Pole Farm. I’ll close with one of those pewee photos as I wish all birders a happy Fall migration season. 🦅
