Northern Harrier With an Attitude

As we walked around Bennington Lake this morning, we noticed a red-tailed hawk sitting in the top of a pine tree.  Soon a female northern harrier started dive bombing the red-tail.  Not only was she diving at the bird, she was also screaming for it to leave.  This went on for several minutes before the red-tail took off – with the harrier in hot pursuit!  There were two northern shrikes today on our walk and two Townsend's solitaires, plus all the usual winter birds.  While on the east side of the lake we flushed about 35 California quail – that woke us up!  The lake was pretty quiet – 13 common mergansers, 5 green-winged teal, 3 mallards, 2 killdeer and a solitary ring-billed gull. There was a winter bite to the air this morning – it feels like snow!  Ginger