Mysterious bird eaten by peregrine falcon in downtown Syracuse identified
While walking to the office this morning in downtown Syracuse, I looked down on the ground at Hanover Square and noticed an unusual-looking bird wing on the ground.
It was the remains of a bird that apparently had been killed and eaten by one of the peregrine falcons nesting on top of the nearby State Tower Building.
In the downtown's "circle of life," peregrines routinely feed on pigeons, which frequent city streets in great numbers. It's not uncommon to find their remains (bones, feathers, etc.) on the ground at Hanover Square and on nearby streets and sidewalks.
But this wing I found had a much different look. There were streaks of yellow on the upper wing, and more pronounced yellow feathers visible on the bottom part.
I took pictures of the wing and forwarded them to Laura Erickson, author and former science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Her thoughts?
"Northern flicker," she said. "The eastern form of the species is called a yellow-shafted flicker for obvious reasons--obvious as shown in the photos, at least."
According to allaboutbird.org, "Flickers are fairly large woodpeckers with a slim, rounded head, slightly down-curved bill, and long, flared tail that tapers to a point."
Their habitat? "Look for flickers in open habitats near trees, including woodlands, edges, yards, and parks."
But how did this woodpecker end up meeting a grisly death in downtown Syracuse? The website provided a clue: "The northern flicker is one of the few North American woodpeckers that is strongly migratory. Flickers in the northern parts of their range move south for the winter, although a few individuals often stay rather far north."
Was this bird just migrating through downtown Syracuse, minding its own business when a peregrine took it down for a meal?
"It's a perfectly reasonable speculation," Erickson said. " We find flicker wings and feathers along Lake Superior during migration every year. They're very predictable fliers with a lot of meat, so they seem to be a preferred meal for hawks and falcons."
Pigott
By David Figura |
dfigura@syracuse.com Follow on Twitter
on October 27, 2015 at 1:22 PM, updated October 27, 2015 at 7:21 PM
