Lucky you two!! Great find!!
On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 4:22 PM Jules294@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <
jules294@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Congratulations, Anthony and Sherrie!Kassie
Kathy Teague
Sent from my iPad
On Jun 19, 2021, at 2:55 PM, Anthony Hewetson <fattonybirds@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
Greetings All:
I had the best picture I took reviewed by two raptor biologists and an
experienced local birder and they agreed with Sheri Anderson and I
that we had a Common Black-Hawk flying over Yellowhouse Canyon this
morning.
The bird was pretty high, drifting in circles while being harried by
numerous Mississippi Kites. Its overall movement was downstream from
the FM 400 crossing of the river (downstream from Lake Ransom Canyon)
and, though way, way up there, it was generally drifting along the
riparian corridor.
The species was present at this site during breeding seasons from 1982
through 1985 ... with a pair present from spring through fall of 1982
and a pair present from spring through fall of 1983. The birds seen
in 1983 produced one fledgling so this is not an unprecedented event
for this riparian corridor (good water this year, lots of cottonwoods
- by our standards) but it was a pretty surprising find for us! We
were just checking every Turkey Vulture for wayward Black Vultures or
Zone-tailed Hawks and, voila!, something totally off our radar.
I would like to thank Drew Harvey for prompting me to check the
archives; for some reason I thought that this was only the second
record of the species for the region but it was just the second record
since my arrival in 1998.
Anthony Hewetson; Lubbock
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