More, As Promised

So, here is the rest of the story from last weekend.  We took the dogs to Cox Hall Creek for a quick walk before packing up to go home on Sunday and we were pretty disappointed in the bird activity.  It seems like all of the birds took off on Saturday night and no new birds came down from the north to replace them.  Oh well, at least it was a beautiful day and not too hot for the walk. Remember, this is the park that used to be the golf course, so it is pretty big with lots of walking paths.

Just as we were headed back to the car, we spotted a few birds and stopped to take a look.  One of the birds turned out to be Olive-sided Flycatcher which is pretty uncommon.  I blogged about my "lifer" last year if you want to check it out click HERE.  This bird was perched high on a dead branch as most Flycatchers like to do.  They sit there and then fly out, catch a bug, and fly back to the same perch.  We watched this guy do that a few times.  You can tell from the photo that this is Olive-sided by the "vest".

 Olive-sided Flycatcher

The Flycatcher repositioned himself onto a bigger branch and sat there for awhile.  I have more than a dozen photos that look just like the one below.

 Olive-sided Flycatcher perched

What happened next was pretty amazing - all captured frame by frame while Barbara was yelling. . .

Olive-sided Flycatcher leaving his perch in a hurry

"Kestral!" "Incoming!"  And whoosh, the Kestral (which is a falcon that eats other birds and insects) came zooming in for a meal. Take note to which branch the Flycatcher is on above, then note where the Kestral lands below.  The Flycatcher narrowly escaped - whew!

 American Kestral coming in for a landing

 American Kestral perching

Look at the expression on this falcon. She is obviously not happy that she missed that meal. I'm sure she grabbed a dragonfly down on fairway 9!

American Kestral