Dec. 28-29, 2002 Dyer and Lake Co. TN Running the back roads this weekend, I discovered concentrations of Harriers, in fact for the first time in memory, Harriers out numbered Red-tailed Hawks on a weekend. Red-tail numbers have seemed awfully low so for this year but maybe it is just my imagination. At the Bogota Bottoms on Saturday morning, I had 9 Harriers in view at one time. When I met up with Nancy Moore and we visited the area on Sunday morning, we counted 16 Harriers while viewing the Laps. At just about any location on both days you could scan around and have at least one Harrier in view. Saturday evening, I decided to watch the rice fields north of Black Bayou in Lake Co. and there I counted 26 Harriers going to roost but only one Short-eared Owl was seen. The best show was Sunday evening, when I went back to the Bogota/Obion Bottoms. The Harriers did things here that I had never seen or heard before. They came into a cut soybean field and started to just sit around in the open. Only occasionally getting up to harass a nearby neighbor but hey, that is how they got their name as it comes from an old English word, hergian which means "to harass by hostile attacks". There was a small, maybe 1/2 acre of grass in the middle of this vast closely cut field and I could not imagine they would roost there but this was probably only a staging area much like individual Red-tails have before dusk from which they slip off to their final night roost. It kept getting darker and the birds started getting more active and generally congregating near th is small patch of grass. At 5:05 PM they were all in the air swirling around in a tight tornado like circle, 17 female and immatures plus 5 small light males were seemingly chasing theirs and each others tails. At this time, as I was fairly close and all was quite, I heard for the first time ever their vocalizations. At 5:09 the last bird had gone to roost and all had settled into that one small plot of grass. Pretty neat! You never know when you might receive such a gift, so take some time and sit and watch for your a realization to come. Good Birding!!! Jeff R. Wilson OL' COOT / TLBA Bartlett Tenn. =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. ----------------------------------------------------- To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ----------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TN-Bird Net Owner: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx (423) 764-3958 =========================================================