On our trip back to Colorado today, the sun blazed in the southern sky but had little effect on the cold, Arctic air that enveloped the Great Plains. And while a blanket of snow softened the gray and brown landscape, there was no denying that this is the lean season, the season of survival.
As is usually the case in winter, raptors dominated the wildlife scene. We saw a hundred or more red-tailed hawks in Missouri and eastern Kansas, perched in barren trees along the highway; American kestrels were also common, hunting from power lines or hovering above the grassy medians. A lone shrike perched on a sapling in the Flint Hills of Kansas and a pair of bald eagles soared above the Smoky Hill Valley at Junction City.
Further west, where trees are limited to towns and stream channels, northern harriers were the primary raptors, flapping low above the crop fields in search of prey. Near Oakley, Kansas, several rough-legged hawks hunted on the grasslands, easily identified by their black tail band and black wrist marks. Finally, as the sun set behind the Front Range, a prairie falcon strafed the highway just east of Denver, a fitting end to this day of the raptors.
