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 and, food, foraging and/or methods:
“This is the only “wet” community in a wide area, and is the rendezvous of cow hands seeking to break the monotony of chuck wagon food and range life. Friday night is the “big time” for local cowboys, and consequently the calaboose is called the “Friday night jail.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.”
—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)
“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)