Polar Bear Blog - Northern Harrier Cruising By - July 24, 2006

I should probably just change the name of this blog because everything up here is way too neat not to write about. So today I'm talking about birds. Actually, just one bird, in fact, a raptor that is cruising around just outside my window right now.

It is a Northern Harrier (the one's the fighter jets are named after) hunting and hovering around Camp Nanuq. Harriers, also called Marsh Hawks up here (as opposed to seagulls which are called sh*t hawks up here), are fairly common migrants to the Churchill area. This one is a female, dark brown, highlighted by a white bar across its narrow tail. She is pretty large for a harrier, probably 2' long with a 4' plus wingspan.

They seem precarious and graceful at once, flying low over the tundra or teetering 10-12' off the ground searching for prey, sometimes stopping in mid-air to scan, motionless and impossibly aloft, looking and listening for anything at all. They cruise along hunting lemmings and voles, the arctic's rodents - our version of mice minus the tail.

Harriers and other raptors track their prey with their highly develped eyesight. At least 8x superior to man's, they can spot movement from impossible distances and may even be able to track prey by the residue of their warm little bodies, creating almost a 'Mondrian' grid of neon heat traces on the tundra.

Even their predatory look is an adaptation to hunting. Their hooked beak adapted to tearing flesh and their equally hooked brow adapted to shield their eyes, both from sun and flailing little rodents.