Gray Ghost Meets Chocolate Falcon

This Northern Harrier, male soared by here yesterday, very thrilling for us. Dubbed the "gray ghost" by some birders, the male Northern Harrier is beautifully pale gray above, whitish below. We seldom see males here, we're more likely to see females and juveniles, which are brown with warm tones below.
Harrriers course over fields looking for voles, so the fields in front of our house attract them.

Meanwhile. recently over our local hawk watch site, Pack Monadnock Raptor Migration Observatory, Peterborough, NH, sailed this Merlin, aka the "chocolate falcon." Adult male Merlins are gray above (in the subspecies found here), females and juveniles are brown above. Merlins are faster than a speeding bullet, if you blink you miss them. Being falcons, they eat other birds.

So many cool raptors still being seen here. On Pack Monadnock this weekend they will be looking for Golden Eagles, come join them!