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Rough-legged Hawk @ Coddle Creek Reservoir?



Coddle Creek reservoir - about midway between Concord and Davidson, NC, was
just about carpeted with birds yesterday around 2:00pm.  Seen, in addition
to the usual suspects:

>200 Buffleheads
>200 Ruddy Dux
Hooded Mergansers
Lesser & Greater Scaup
Ring-necked Dux
American Black Dux
Canvasnacks
Northern Shoveler
Horned Grebes
great wheeling clouds of >500 Ring-billed Gulls
AmCoots galore
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk

But the real interest was a large, Red-tail-sized raptor who I watched
(naked eye) perch in a leafless hardwood across the water from my Macedonia
Ch. Rd. vantage.  I only saw him fly naked eye - both onto and then off of
the perch thirty minutes later. (I did not catch him flying in the scope.)
In between, I scoped him extensively and saw yellow bill, white cheeks,
chin, and throat, darkish cap and nape, very dark (tho not black) chest,
whitish belly, white flanks exposed when the preening bird lifted his wing
occasionally, short whitish tail (underside), whitish pants, yellow legs and
feet.  When the bird reversed his stance on the perch, he displayed darkish
back and short (but folded and obscured by branches) tail.

Chest was much too dark high up for a Red-tail, and the face didn't match
either.  The only match that comes close to my observations of giss and
field marx is a Rough-legged Hawk, and I am fairly convinced, tho still
slightly skeptical since this seems out of a R-L Hawk's range (tho not by
much), and the fact that I have never seen one this far south.

Has anyone else seen or heard reports of R-L Hawk this far south or in the
Coddle Creek vicinity this winter?


	7;^)
	Tom "le dilettante maudit" Lorenzin
	Davidson (Lake Norman), NC
	SkyTomX@XMindspring.com or TomLoX@XMicrosoft.com
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