To Soar

The American Eagle soars

 

When the People soar.

On the Wing

 

This is the hawk of which I spoke in my previous post.  What a sight to see—150 to 200 hawks in a kettle!  This is a favorite hawk for me, and only one with which I’ve become familiar as an adult.  I can remember staring at Red Tailed Hawks making lazy circles over the fields in the summers of my youth. However, this one became known to me later.



The Broad-winged Hawk is unusual in size and proportion.  It doesn’t have the considerable size of some Red Tails and is not small as the American Kestrel.  Yet, what catches my eye is the breadth of its wings and the banding of its tail.  When you can find a hawk with alternating white and black stripes in equal amount on its tail, it’s a safe bet the hawk is a Broad-winged.

 

 

I really enjoy this time of year.  Migration and the crisp mornings of fall, such a perfect time to grab your binoculars and scope and head to the field. 

Photographs by Bill Ravenscroft. 

Birder's Best Buy Choice

 

 

 

Broad-winged Hawks and other raptors are flying overhead even as we speak.   Wilson Warblers and Kinglets are to be found in the foliage.  You don’t want to miss the events of migration.  For this, there’s the birder’s best buy choice—the Vortex Viper HD binocular.  Available in 8X or 10 X.

Visit us at www.kingbirdfeeders.com for quality binoculars, spotting scopes, bird feeders, bird houses, field guides, and gear.

Orange You Glad

 

I know, it’s a corny title for this post, but there it is.  And it’s all because of the orioles migrating through the region.  This time it’s a Bullock’s Oriole. 



 

 

It took me a while to adjust to the splitting of the Northern Oriole into two different species.  Their field marks are distinctive, though.  There has been some interbreeding between the Bullock and the Baltimore in the Great Plains.  Fully breeding males of the two species are easily recognized.  Concentrating on the head, the Baltimore is completely black while the Bullock has a lot of orange invading the cheek and eye regions (actually a stripe of black through the eye adjacent to an orange supercilium).  Next, the wing is barred in white for the Baltimore, but the Bullock’s wing has a large distinctive white patch.

The difficulty is in the immatures.  The above photographs are of a Bullock first year male.  The clues are the dark throat patch and the eye line.

Photographs by Bill Ravenscroft