Presenting.....

I got photos! They are not very good photos, but you can see the birds. I have eliminated the possibility that they are Merlins, wrong colour.

I checked with What Bird again and am no further ahead in identifying it. They may be Prairie Falcons, in which case, they are way far north of their usual areas, the call is close. They may also be American Kestrels, but they would have to have been the females or juveniles - again, the call is close. The only other thing they could be is Peregrines, there has been a nesting pair living year round in down town Edmonton for years now. Not exactly their usual hunting grounds, but they are there, too bad the call and the colour are not quite right.

The first two shots are the same bird. I am not sure clicking to enlarge will make it any clearer.



This is the second one and shooting into the light, all I have is silhouette - um and his dinner.

This is the third one we could find. A good shot from below that shows the detail of his tail (no, he restrained him or herself).



And as we were ending our walk, this was how the sky looked.


We could hear a fourth, but didn't catch sight of him/her. If anyone can give me another choice of bird, the call sounded most like the Merlin or the Prairie Falcon.

Have a good day all.

Monday, as Saturday.

Yes, I work weekends and have Monday and Tuesday as days off. So, today, I am doing very little, I need to go and get some groceries and a tube for my bicycle tire. Exciting stuff eh?

During the thunderstorm on Thursday evening, I had a hawk land on the tree outside my apartment. I was lucky to get a shot of it, I happened to be outside trying to film the little wrens at their bird house when he landed. I say trying, because I could not keep the camera steady at all. No film due to my shaking hands, but I did manage to get one bad photo.



Near as I can tell it is a Red Tailed Hawk. He stayed there for a few minutes and I tried to film him too, but no luck. I saw another bird in my peripheral vision come from over the roof of the building and then bank and take off back over the building. That hawk was after it in the blink of an eye. I think it was a raven or magpie, but it could have been this ones mate for all I saw of it.

I think it is strange to see hawks in the city, but after all we do have Peregrine Falcons that nest downtown, so why not hawks. After all, we are eating up their territory by expanding the city boundaries so rapidly.

Well, I am off to shop. Have a good day all.