on 8/5/98, Don Baccus wrote:
>
>This kind of hovering doesn't really fit the normal hunting mode of <snip>.

Don nicely clarifies my original post; I hadn't meant to imply that
hovering was the normal hunting fashion for red-tails, ferruges, or
Swainson's, just that they are all capable of using it.

Jerry asks:
>Seriously--is there any one ID mark on a Rough-leg that would distinguish
>it from the rest while in flight?

and Jack answers with a very complete post on the difficulties of
distinguishing rough-legs, but, to my mind, misses the mark. First, what is
the proportion of dark morph to light morph rough-legs here? In my
experience, light morph birds are far more common than dark morph, though
the bulk of that experience was gained 800 mile south, so I could be wrong.
But just to simplify things for Jerry, let's drop the problem of dark morph
birds for the time being. So what do you look for in a light morph
rough-leg? From the top side, a white patch on the upper end of the tail
feathers (_not_ the same as the white rump patch of a harrier), and white
patches at the base of the primaries. From the underside, look for the dark
spots at the "wrist" of the wings. If you see these, you got a rough-leg.
Have I over-simplified? Yeah, but you gotta start somewhere...

One more suggestion for your library, Jerry: go get _Hawks in Flight_ by
Dunne, Sibley, and Sutton. The best hawk illustrations to be had, in my
opinion, and a nicely written text.

Rob Saecker
Olympia