ML81898231

Age and sex

Juvenile, Unknown sex - X

Media notes

Photo taken Jan 2, by my wife of a bird perched about 20' from out bird feeder.

Observation details

Noticed a large bird flash by our feeder, when near the ground it flared its tail and wings, giving the impression of a buteo sized bird, and flew into a clump of trees. A few seconds later it land in a tree where I was able to see maybe the upper third of the back side of the bird. It had a distinct whitish supercilium and orangish-yellowing eyes. Upper back/lower neck had distinct vertical streaking. The rest of the back that I could see was a fairly mottled dark brown and whitish. This was clearly a juvinile accipitor, and was significantly bigger than any of the Cooper's hawks I've seen in the yard. After about thirty seconds the bird flew off and I wasn't able to find it again. Based on what I saw, I was fairly sure this was a Goshawk. However, I don't have experience with Goshawks and knew it would be rare to see one here, so I decided not to "count" it. On Jan 2 my wife called me at work and said there was a large hawk perched in our backyard. From her description it sounded like it might be the bird I saw today. She was able to get pictures of the Jan 2 bird. She sent me one picture from which I was fairly sure it was a Goshawk. I sent it to Kim Eckert who agreed it was a Goshawk. When I got home I looked through all of the Jan. 2 photos and have attached the best two, that clearly show a Northern Goshawk. The Jan 2 pictures my wife took of the back side of the bird shows the same patterns that I saw on the bird today. Given the known presence of a Goshawk in our yard, I am now pretty confident that the bird I saw today was a Goshawk.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS REBEL T2i

ISO

640

Focal length

250 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/320 sec

Dimensions

2801 pixels x 1831 pixels

Original file size

1.27 MB