I have been mesmerized by this photo since the moment I first saw it.

I’m drawn in by the bird’s ghostly white color, by the warning look on its face, by its intense, red eye.

This is a white-tailed kite, a hawk that hunts rodents in open scrubland by hovering kite-like in the air.  As scary as this bird looks to us, it rarely eats birds so most flocks ignore it. 

The majority of white-tailed kites live in Central and South America but their range extends into western California, western Oregon, southeastern Texas and southern Florida.  They are not plentiful in North America but they can travel widely. 

Cris Hamilton photographed this one at Bosque del Apache, New Mexico last November.

(photo by Cris Hamilton)

About the size of a red-tailed hawk, gyrfalcons are the largest falcon on earth.

They live in the Arctic around the globe in Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia.  Even in darkest winter adult gyrfalcons stay up north, though individual juveniles may winter as far south as the Chesapeake.

Gyrfalcons eat many things but ptarmigan are their favorite prey.  Studies have shown that their breeding success is tied to the abundance of ptarmigan in their home territory and that their population fluctuates in synch with the ptarmigan’s 10-year population cycle.

How closely are gyrfalcons tied to ptarmigan?  This dramatic video shows a gyrfalcon hunting for ptarmigan, something it’s especially skilled to do.  (Don’t watch if you don’t like to see birds hunting birds.  The gyr catches a ptarmigan.)

Now the Arctic’s climate is changing.  The ice is melting.  Ptarmigan peak populations do not rebound as high as before and gyrfalcon breeding success has declined.

What will happen to gyrfalcons and ptarmigan as the arctic warms?

That’s the subject of a three-day conference this week in Boise, Idaho entitled Gyrfalcons and Ptarmigan in a Changing World.

Convened by The Peregrine Fund, Boise State University and the US Geological Survey, the conference will explore the future of an arctic keystone species — the ptarmigan — and an indicator species — the gyrfalcon.  When the conference ends, the Peregrine Fund and their partners will develop a strategy for monitoring the gyrfalcon and, if need be, acting to save it.

I hope that saving it won’t be necessary.

Click here for information on the papers to be presented at the conference.  Click here to read about The Peregrine Fund and view the excellent video on their home page.

p.s.  “Gyr” is pronounced “jerr.”

(video from YouTube)

To us a winter field looks empty but there’s food under the snow if you can hear it.

This snowy owl is standing on prey in Kingston, Ontario, caught in the act by Kim Steininger.

Kingston is known for the large number of snowy owls who spend the winter there — but not this year.  Kim and Paul found only one.

As Kim writes, “Paul and I went up there hoping to photograph Snowy Owls but we were only able to find one and we weren’t able to find her every day so we didn’t get many shots.  One day she was hanging out on the ground about a football field away from us.  After a couple hours of waiting for her to do something she flew about 40 feet away from us and caught a vole!!!  We were floored!”

Waiting for a great shot like this has got to be an incredibly cold endeavor.  I’m in awe of photographers and birders who can do it.

But it’s all a matter of preparation.  Snowy owls are well equipped to hunt under harsh conditions with their downy insulation and excellent hearing (they can hear voles moving under the snow!).  If I want to see snowy owls doing exciting things, I have to be well equipped too.

Or to put it another way… 

“There is no such thing as bad weather; it’s inappropriate gear.”
— words of wisdom from a Tlingit woman in Seward Bay, Alaska, thanks to Dick Martin.

(photo by Kim Steininger)