Birds and Nature

This Prairie Merlin is the last species I found on my birding trip last week. Look below the tree limb and you will see dangling legs and feet from the prey that is being eaten by the Merlin, and in some pics part of it's lower body is evident. The pics below are enlarged to better show the feet and long claws. You can see that it is feathered just above the joint.  It looks in the pic just below to have only 3 toes but with two of the toes are foreward and one toe is back.  Not sure what kind of bird has this configuration. And the final enlargement  appears to show the head (looks like it has 2 eyes) of the prey bird between the Merlin's feet but maybe some other part of the body.  Not sure what this prey might be.  SeEtta

On my trip east of Pueblo I also found this dark morph Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk in the area near Lake Holbrook. Another very spooky hawk that would flush as soon as I turned off the engine of my car. Again mostly blackish plumage (altho a little more dark brown in it) with white lorals. It also had red in it's tail though it was multiple thin bands across it. SeEtta

In addition to a number of distant ducks and a few Am Pelicans I also saw several hundred Canada Geese. When the geese took off I could see this lone white goose flying with them. SeEtta

On the other side of Lake Holbrook I found this Prairie Falcon making some nice diversity of raptors for the day. SeEtta