Food and Foraging Methods
The diet consists mainly of small ground-living animals in areas of low or sparse vegetation. An important part is taken by small rodents, small birds and large insects.
As this bird has a wide distribution, it will take whatever prey is available in the area where it nests; in the steppe it will take many sousliks, whereas in southern Europe, more lizards and large insects will be caught. In areas where the food supply is composed almost exclusively of rodents, the breeding success depends greatly on the cyclic fluctuations of vole populations.
Prey is caught while flying along fixed routes at low heights and constant low speeds (c. 30 km/h), as is typical of harriers. The flight is considered lighter and more dexterous than other harriers enabling it to take more agile prey. When possible it often follows the edges of various vegetation to catch its prey by surprise. This is taken after a short stoop, though fast running animals and flying birds can be chased over a short distance.
During the breeding season, the male will provision the female and later the young with food. The rate of provisioning increases from 5 to 6 times per day during incubation to 7 to 10 times per day when young have hatched, though the male can be handicapped by wet, foggy or windy weather. In a manner typical of harriers, prey is passed between partners in the air: The female flies underneath the male, who drops the prey for her to catch. The male hunts over a large area up to 12 km away from the nest. The female hunts closer to the nest, up to 1 km away, and only after the young have hatched.
Read more about this topic: Montagu's Harrier
Famous quotes containing the words food, foraging and/or methods:
“God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Soft are the hands of Love,
but what soft hands
clutched at the thorny ground,
scratched like a small white ferret
or foraging whippet or hound.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)