Re: [cobirds] Re: Rough-Legged Hawk in Longmont (Boulder County)

I went to take a look this afternoon. This would (embarrassingly) be a lifer for me. So my judgment is probably clouded as one would expect for someone in the 400's of life list who is lucky to add 10 a year without selfishly targeting my vacations for birds.

I studied it for 15 minutes as it moved from perch to perch (I was in my car on Clover Basin, Grandview and another residential road near the Blue Skies park.

I could never get a look at the underwings as it would fly away from my viewpoint and drop low immediately. I studied the legs for feathers and could not see any, but when I went back to study at the computer I see that those would be more subtle than what I was expecting with the name "rough legged".

But how about this tidbit. It perched in a short tree once in a remarkably thin branch. I thought that was odd and then later read on Cornell All About Birds that this is a behavior for roughies. Might it be true for a Harlan's too?

BTW this individual would certainly not be a dark-morph roughie.

Hopefully someone gets a pic and does whatever necessary to convince us all it is a roughie (photoshop is always an option ;-)

Ron Bolton

Berthoud

On Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 5:30:14 PM UTC-7, Christian Nunes wrote:

Hi All,

I hate to be a pester, but I've noticed several local reports of Rough-legged Hawks recently which were supported by photos. In each case, the bird in question has been a Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk. This includes a photo of the bird referred to below. 

Rough-legged Hawks are not a rarity, so not many questions are usually asked. However, these recent photo-documented cases bring up the identification conundrum between Roughies and Harlan's (they have been known to hybridize, btw: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/hybrid_halhxrlha/).

Some things to remember are that Rough-legged Hawks are irruptive. Some years they are plentiful throughout much of the state, but most years they are restricted to the eastern plains and mountain valleys and are seen only sporadically along the Front Range. They don't return to established winter territories, which is a classic habit of Harlan's Hawks. Just yesterday I identified a Harlan's Hawk an eighth of a mile away by naked eye based simply on the dark color and the perch it was on, one which has been used by the same exact bird for several years. Scope views confirmed my hunch. There was a famous light-morph Harlan's that spent many winters on 75th St and St. Vrain Rd in Boulder County and who was photographed at a hawk watch in Alaska one spring. For at least five winters it could be found on the same exact telephone pole, or within a few hundred yards of it. There was an excellent piece in Colorado Birds 44:1 about this story: http://cobirds.org/JournalArchives/2010-2019/2010%20Vol%2044/CB_2010_44_1_Jan.pdf

Also remember that dark-morph Rough-legged Hawks are very uncommon in the state. Harlan's are superficially similar, especially those with a pale tail with a wide dark terminal band. They invariably have white streaking on the breast, a feature not shown on dark-morph Rough-legged Hawks. The kicker is that Roughies have feathers tarsi, unlike Red-tailed Hawks of any ilk. 

Keep on enjoying these Arctic visitors, 

Christian Nunes

Longmont

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Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 13:47:19 -0800
From: iron...@gmail.com
To: cob...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cobirds] Re: Rough-Legged Hawk in Longmont (Boulder County)

Thanks for the heads up!  

--Jamie Simo

Longmont, CO

On Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 10:57:34 AM UTC-7, Kat Bradley-Bennett wrote:

A Rough-Legged Hawk has again taken up winter residence in Blue Skies Park in west Longmont.  I've seen it perched on the perching poles in the park and in a tree near the intersection of Clover Basin Drive and Grandview Meadows Drive, nest to the sledding hill.

Kat Bradley-Bennett
Longmont

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