ML617599081

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Behaviors

Flying

Observation details

Holy Crap!!! Was standing outside the forestry building while waiting for the ornithology bus to arrive when I noticed a dark raptor moving southwest fairly quickly way high up. I lifted my bins up, not entirely sure what it was expecting, only to see an obvious dark morph SWHA! I quickly raised my camera (which I luckily had on me) only to find my battery was dead. I quickly changed it out, but the SWHA was already a good distance away so all I got were a few photos of it going away. Entirely dark mid-sized raptor (slightly larger than a RSHA) with long slender wings ending on a point, a tail that appeared long, slightly bulging secondaries (though not to the extent of a RTHA), rufous feathering in the tail was non-existent from what I could tell. Photos available but ultimately probably not helpful. Was not expecting a campus SWHA this morning! This bird had a striking resemblance to another very dark morph SWHA which spent the summer of 2021 less than a mile from my house in Sacramento, which I found to be interesting as both of these birds appeared to be close to as dark as SWHA can get. https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/346403031

Technical information

Model

E-M1MarkII

Lens

OLYMPUS M.100-400mm F5.0-6.3

ISO

250

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

1314 pixels x 925 pixels

Original file size

566.3 KB