Goshawk at Lake Park 10/25

Lake Park birders,

See the messages from Jym Mooney that I am forwarding below.

--- Paul Hunter
http://home.roadrunner.com/~phunter1/lakeparkbirds.html
http://lakeparkbirds.blogspot.com/
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On Oct 25, 2009, at 8:45 PM, Jym Mooney wrote:

I was checking out the sparrow seed dump north of Bradford Beach
early this morning, roughly between 7 and 8. I spotted a large hawk
that came banking over the bluff slightly south of me. I got my bins
on it, and could see it was an accipiter (long tail, broad wings). I
watched its flight pattern, and noted slow, steady wing beats. It
circled back out of sight over the bluff, and then came back out. On
the second pass it soared a bit.

Otherwise it was all steady beats, not the flap and glide pattern of
the smaller accipiters. Mostly I was only able to see the underside
of the bird, which was whitish with light barring on the breast and
wings. This bird did not have the red/orange breast barring of a
Cooper or sharpie, or the brown streaks of an immature accipiter.
After the second pass back over the bluff I did not see the bird
again. Later I also found a Cooper's hawk and a red-tailed hawk in
the park, which allowed me to compare their underside patterns with
what I remembered of the first hawk.

Jym