Raptor Wednesday

A trio of squawking Monk Parakeets alerted me to this hawk in a London Plane on 27th Street by 4th Avenue. With the low winter sun and the branches, this was the best photo I could get. I didn’t think much of the encounter until I went around the block and started coming up 26th St.

On the fence around the rather large empty lot on the southwest side of the street, space for 4 or 5 row houses. Note how the markings in front go all the way from throat to belly. A Red-tailed Hawk usually a clear gap between throat and belly, so the markings on the belly often get called a “belly band.”

The bird flew back to perch on a roofline to survey the lot.

Oh, I bet there are a lot of rats around here. On the other side of the lot is a fish distributor. A substantial bakery has outposts on both sides of the street and I’ve passed many a pile of reject pita breads among other garbage piles here.

Anyway, going back to the first photo. The dark lines in the tail are roughly the size of the light lines. In first year Red-tailed Hawks, the dark lines are thinner than the light lines; combining this with the full frontal markings makes this a young Red-shouldered Hawk.

This was an avenue block away from Green-Wood, where I’ve seen first year Red-shouldered overhead a few times this season.