While outside (Florence, Montana) yesterday looking for Snow Bunting (and other open country birds), encountered several buteo soaring along mountain foothill (nice and windy) instead. Light was not good; identification of far soaring birds came out "black" :-) No matter stayed on task and was rewarded with both eagle species and one buteo with "several" flight feathers missing. That is really weird. Got out my camera rig (Canon T1i w/70-300mm) and shot several photos at least one football field away, results below. It is definitely a Rough-legged Hawk (
Buteo lagopus) with at least three flight feathers missing from the left wing. It was flying just fine by the way!
I visited
Jerry Ligouri website, expert raptor photographer. In a brief search of his site could not find specific material related to rough-legs and molt. Still, he has excellent material on all things hawks, identification, photographs, etc.
 |
| Rough-legged Hawk |
 |
| Rough-legged Hawk (Note faint thick belly band) |
No comments:
Post a Comment