[obol] Benton County GYRFALCON

[Lars and Gail Norgren]

      My heartfelt thanks to Karl Kosciuch
for driving away from his lunch hour lifer
to alert me of the falcon's whereabouts. I
was dinking around the high water on Buchanan
Rd when he came back and told me where it was.
I probably would have stumbled onto it, but thanks
to Karl I got an extra half hour to look at it.
I got 60 usable pictures but haven't managed to
transfer them to the computer yet.
     The day was off to a good start when I saw
my first Willamette Valley PRAIRIE FALCON after
35 yrs of sporadic efforts. This was on Smithfield
Rd about 1km east of its jct with Livermore Rd.
As one enters the refuge(Baskett Slough) from the
east there is a long driveway leading north to
a sizeable farmstead. A powerline made with twin
wooden poles runs parallel to Smithfield Rd and
the Prairie Falcon was perched on the second pair
of poles west of this driveway. It's also the second
pair of poles east of Livermore Rd. With the naked
eye the bird was invisible from Smithfield Rd, and
even with 12x binocular it only appeared as a pale
dot, as I could see its underside. The backside is
a great match to the slightly weathered pole.
     On a business trip to Buena Vista Dec 9 I drove
through this area and missed both shrikes and falcons.
I now appreciate how hard the falcons can be to see.
At one point fog drifted in and completely obscured
the pole. Today(Sat 12/30) seems like an ideal day
for scanning if fog is absent. I'm a bit mystified
by false eyes on the back of the Prairie Falcon's
head. There were two large, pale, symetrical
spots on the nape, which I don't see in any field guides.
I saw the same thing on an adult Peregrine perched
on the north shore of Baskett Slough last June.
     Fog was an intermittent problem throughout the
day Thursday. Fortunately it was completely absent
between Corvallis and Finley NWR. The GYRFALCON was
on the 5th utility pole west of the RR tracks at
Greenberry. It had just eaten a copious meal and was
quite bloody on the left flank. I parked in a gravel
pullout that gives vehicles access to the grass field
on the south, putting me no more than 50m from the
bird. I was reluctant to set up  the tripod outside
my car window (I forgot the window mount at home)
and managed to do this as numerous halves of double-wide
mobile homes went by. After close to an hour of leaning
out the window to use the scope, Molly, the goose specialist
on the Willamette Valley NWR biology team, parked behind
me and immediately hopped out of her car and ran up to the
scope. The Gyrfalcon did not acknowledge her presence.
     Molly had seen maybe four gyrfalcons in this area
previously and knew them to be extremely tame. She stood
next to my car and talked for at least five minutes
without the falcon ever showing us any recognition.
Her first remark was,"It doesn't look anything like
the other ones. All of them were brown!" This one is
an adult, which I am basing on its yellow cere and
orbital ring. Immatures are to be expected this far
south. Molly also wondered why no Gyrfalcons have
shown up on Finley NWR proper, always here immediately
north of it instead. She thought it might be due to
the very high raptor population on the refuge, over=riding
the attractiveness of the much higher waterfowl population
there. I suspect the attraction of this area to Gyrfalcons
is the immense size of the fields without obstacles
of any kind. They like to fly low to the ground and may
do so here for several kilometers at a time.
      No one reported it yesterday. I didn't expect anyone
would as the bird was "fed up". This falconers' term has
entered our everyday language. After a heavy meal raptors
really don't want to do anything but sit around and
digest it. This one had an incredibly full crop. Maybe
it will be hungry again by today.   Lars Norgren
MANNING OREGON