On Saturday afternoon around 2pm there was Rough-legged Hawk hunting the fields on either side of upper Sandbank Rd (downhill from the King Rd intersection. It was the darkest dark-phase Roughie I have ever seen, with barely a smidgen of white between the wrist and wing tips. I saw no other light color on this bird, though the flat light may have contributed to this. Because it was so dark at first I wanted to make it into an eagle or a TV, but once I saw the wings and realized when it came down that it was not that big, I decided it was a Roughie.
It hovered several times for around 10 seconds and then dropped to the ground but came up with nothing. I returned and found it again about 20 minutes later, bobbing its tail while perched in the small twigs of one of the single trees near the newly erected fence on the south side, from which it launched again to hunt on the northern side of the road. No question once I saw it perched that it was a R-l. -- asher -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
