This is what drives birdwatchers crazy. I don’t want to criticize, and I know Sally has some experience, but you always get people who want you to tell them what they saw. Or rather, they want you to confirm what they think they saw, but they don’t really know. And if you don’t know what you saw then neither do I. In the absence of unmistakable field marks it’s amazing how difficult it can be to collect the necessary information to confirm an ID. It’s not impossible that you had a Gyr; the location is plausible, and the time of year is ok, though the birds are not really migratory but irruptive, moving south in larger numbers in some years more than others. But to get specific, a Gyr is about half the size of a Bald or Golden Eagle. The only bigger birds on the continent are California Condor and Steller’s Sea Eagle (often mistaken for a small airplane.) Unless you’re in the southwest or Alaska I’m pretty sure you didn’t see either of those. Unless you see the bird right next to another one you’re familiar with, size is very difficult to judge. Gyrfalcon is massive compared with other falcons, heavy in the body, with wings that are shorter and blunter than the classic falcon silhouette; it’s most often confused with Northern Goshawk. It can be dark to pale; the gray morph is most common, but dark birds are certainly more likely than white ones. Checking the rare bird alerts there are no recent sightings from Ontario, though that doesn’t prove anything. Gyrfalcon is quite rare in the northern US and southern Canada. Individuals are reported almost yearly in NY State, though these often turn out to have leather bands, or jesses, on their legs, which identifies them as escaped falconry birds, many of which are actually hybrids bred for sport. On the other hand, I can’t think of anything that easily “explains” what you saw. If seen well, a dark Gyr should have remiges (the outer wing feathers) lighter than the wing linings, similar to the Turkey Vulture pattern. If seen less well, well, it’s hard to say; at least it would look more falcon-like than something else might…
Gyrfalcon is a rare and fabled bird. Among literate types it is best know from a gloss on Yeats’ The Second Coming, a poem that holds more oft-quoted lines than any single work should bear…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…
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Gyrfalcon is a rare and fabled bird. Among literate types it is best know from a gloss on Yeats’ The Second Coming, a poem that holds more oft-quoted lines than any single work should bear…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…
- alex 3-27-2007 5:49 am