I ran into Tom Garner from Lancaster, who, like me, had looked for it last winter and been unsuccessful. We watched for about an hour from Green Meadow Road, spotting an immature Bald Eagle, but no 'Gyr'. I told Tom that I was going to work my way over to the nearby Northampton Quarry and check out that area. We exchanged phone numbers and I headed west. Tom worked his way around south of there. As I was at the quarry, checking out another Bald Eagle, my phone rang. It was Tom. He had found the bird on a cell tower along Jacksonville Road. Luckily, the bird stayed there until I got to the spot.
After about a half-hour, the bird bolted off the tower and flew northeast towards some flying ducks. When it was almost out of sight, we saw something drop down below it. It looked like it may have nailed one of them. We waited a while to see if it would return to the tower, but it never did, so I decided to head over to Route 512 in the direction of where it went, hoping that maybe I could find it feeding on whatever it might have caught. I pulled into a parking lot at the St. Luke’s care center at Silver Crest Road and checked a grassy field across Route 512. Then, I went over to the retention pond behind the center and checked the area around there. I saw a raptor perched on a distant cell tower in Bath, but couldn’t make out what it was, so I decided to head up that way and check it out. As I got back onto 512, there was Tom Garner parked along the road, looking at the bird in the same field I had searched earlier! As it turned out, it was in a part of the field that I couldn’t see when I checked it from the parking lot. The bird was ripping apart a Mallard no more than 50 yards from the road! It fed for a long time, giving us great looks as it ripped apart the duck.
A few times, it tried to drag the kill to a different area of the field but was unable to.
Eventually, Shannon Thompson, Mike and Corrine Schall, and Jim Funk showed up at the spot. Little did we know that the show would get even better. A Red-tailed Hawk came in and chased the Gyr off of its kill, followed soon after by a Peregrine Falcon. The Gyr flew towards the cement mill’s buildings and landed on a pole in that direction.
I tried getting some flight shots, but everything was so badly blurred due to the speed of the bird and the lowering sun. After a while, it flew over the kill a couple times and landed on a much closer pole near our cars.
Then, as it tried to return to the kill, one of the two present Peregrine Falcons veered in towards it. The Gyr flipped upside-down as the Peregrine zoomed above it over the field and again about 30 feet over us! I got a couple terribly-blurred photos of the two interacting.
I was happily surprised that I was able to get anything at all since it happened so fast. As dusk approached, it flew off to the west towards the southern end of the quarries along Route 987. It was a super afternoon!
More photos of the bird can be found in my Local Notables - 2018 Album.
