I've written about this hawk before. It's kind of a blessing to me to live so close to it's territory, but this week gave me some particularly good looks at it.
First, a little background: this hawk is a little bit of a mystery. There is argument over what its nature is. Some people insist that it is simply a red-tailed hawk, but its call and some of its markings contradict that directly. Others think it is a pure red-shouldered hawk, but if it is, it's a fairly unusual one: heavier than other red-shouldered hawks, and with markings that are unheard of on red-shouldered.
An emerging consensus (one backed up by noted ornithologist David Sibley) is that it is an extremely rare hybrid red-shouldered / red-tailed hawk. That's my belief, but I'm perfectly willing to consider other possibilities.
I've got several photos of this bird, including the one shown here and it's been routinely flying through our yard and screeching (sometimes at me, since it doesn't seem to like me taking photos of it; otherwise I'd be taking a lot more).
In this particular case, we had a nasty snowstorm (as in, roads closed, buses going off the road, etc.) Monday. On my way home, I got to watch the hawk fly across the road in front of me and land in a tree, knocking the snow off its top. Very cool. When I got out of the car, I finally figured out where it had gone and managed to get a few photos of it, surrounded by snow.
Here's one more:
Earlier this month, I got to see it from across the street:
And when I got home tonight, it was hanging out in our yard again:
I'm introducing the rest of these photos as a bird quiz. Feel free to post guesses in the comments.
Note: all these are clickable, so if you want to know the answer to any bird ID, you can click on it to get the details. You can also click on any of these photos to get larger versions of them.
Earlier this week, I also got to see a different hawk (we'll call this "Bird #1"):
This (bird #2) is a fairly unusual bird for our area:
These (bird #'s 3 & 4) are different kinds of ducks:
These (bird #'s 5 & 6) are two other kinds of ducks:
Here's a better shot of one of the above:
This one (bird #7) is very common in much of the US:
This one (bird #8) is very uncommon in our area, but has shown up in force in New England this year:
This one (bird #9) is another kind of duck:
This one (bird #10) is uncommon enough that I had to work really hard to find one before accidentally almost stepping on one in my yard:
This (bird #11) is a common yardbird for us:
This one (bird #12) is very common where I live:
And this one (#13) is a much less common relative of #12:
And here are some which may contain either bird #12 or #13:
And finally, some non-bird photos: long exposure night shots, put in both b&w and color:
As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birds, birding and/or photography thread.