[bcbirdclub] Northern Goshawk

From: Daryl Owens <daryl.owens@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Buchanan County Bird Club <bcbirdclub@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 08:11:46 -0400

    I am very excited to report my latest and maybe the greatest life bird I've 
had in a while.  Yesterday afternoon I was working alone on a surface mine in 
Montcalm WV.  I had my binoculars out looking at a very handsome male American 
Kestrel.  A few moments later I heard a fairly loud vocalization coming closer. 
 I looked up and saw a Kestrel mobbing a large dark bird.  At first I passed it 
off as a Raven, but as it drew closer I saw that this bird had a very long 
tail.  I immediately realized this bird was an accipiter but was much larger 
than a Coopers or Sharp-shinned Hawk.  I grabbed my binoculars and was able to 
see that the bird had a light colored breast with heavy dark streaking and its 
back was slate gray. The shape of the birds wings were similar to a 
Broad-wing's however the tips were more pointed.  Also this buteo-sized bird 
dwarfed the small Kestrel or Kestrels I should say, as another bird joined in 
the mobbing after few seconds.  I was able to watch this amazing show for less 
than a minute, but these few seconds will stick with me for a long time.  After 
it was over, I started trying to figure out what I'd just seen.  I thought that 
a Goshawk was too good to be true, but after a got home and started researching 
I ruled out all the other possibilities.  The pictures of juvenile Goshawks in 
Pete Dunne's book were a carbon-copy of the bird I saw.  The proverbial "icing 
on the cake" came when I listened to the vocalizations of the birds and 
realized that some of the vocalizations that I'd assumed were the Kestrels' 
were actually the Goshawk's as some of them seemed to be deeper in tone and the 
tempo was slower.  Needless to say, I was beside myself when I realized what 
I'd seen and I'm still giddy about it this morning.  

 

 

Hoping to see everyone at David Raines' 

Sparrow Day in a couple weeks,

 

 

Daryl

[bcbirdclub] Northern Goshawk

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