[EBB Sightings] Prairie Falcon Coyote Hills Regional Park

At 6:30 tonight, just outside the entry kiosk to the park, Nancy Christensen spotted the prairie falcon flying not very high over the fields to the south.  Suddenly, the falcon went into a steep, fast, and brief stoop and landed in the field.  I think it came up empty-taloned, though, because it flew to an electrical tower and perched on a crossbar about halfway up the tower, and it didn't seem to be eating anything while perched.  We had good but distant scope views of the bird while it was on the tower.  In an effort to see the bird better, we moved to the unpaved parking lot at the corner of Patterson Ranch Road and Paseo Padre Parkway and walked out the gravel road next to the buildings at the south end of the lot. However, that put the orange glow of sunset behind the now-silhouetted tower, and in the rapidly failing light the bird flew and headed south, where we lost sight of it.  


Stephanie Floyd
Fremont  


--- On Sat, 9/27/08, Stephanie Floyd  wrote:

> From: Stephanie Floyd 
> Subject: [EBB Sightings] Prairie Falcon Coyote Hills Regional Park
> To: sightings at diabloaudubon.com
> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 4:51 PM
> At 5:15 PM Friday (yesterday) at Coyote Hills Regional Park,
> a prairie falcon flew in and landed about halfway up the
> electrical tower closest to the entry kiosk on the north
> side of Patterson Ranch Road.?The bird was brown and white
> - no pewter, no gray - with narrow malar stripes, white
> behind the eye, dark ear patch, brown streaks on a white
> breast, and a big, wedge-shaped white tail with brown bars.
> I only saw it from the underside while it was perched. 
> After about two minutes, the bird took issue with being
> looked at and flew off to the south, fast but not very fast,
> and not high, across the fields that the Canada geese have
> been gathering in.  The bird's upper parts were medium
> brown.  The bird turned west towards the hills before the
> quarry, and I lost sight of it. I attempted to find it again
> at 7:30 this morning but was not successful.
> 
> 
> Stephanie Floyd
> Fremont
> 
> 
> 
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