>From Don's excellent answer, I'm going to conclude it was a sharpie (what
I originally told people who asked me). It had a rather long and widely
banded tail, and from a distance, didn't have that kestral profile. I
rechecked my National Geographic guide, and with those illustrations, the
tails don't look that different. Possibly what made me wonder if my
original assessment that it was a sharpie may have been in error were the
pigeons it was eyeing. I remember when I first got into birding, the
merlin was sometimes called a pigeon hawk.

wjansen
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On Tue, 22 Dec 1998, Don Baccus wrote:

>
> Sharpies have very long tails compared to merlins. All of the browns
> on an immy sharpy tend towards milk chocolate, while the typical
> subspecies of merlin we see here is more like a toll-house choco chip
> semi-sweet brown. Dark, in other words.
>
> The barring on a sharpies tail is pretty even in width, while our
> typical merlin shows very narrow pale banding on its tail.
>
> If the shape is the same as a kestral with the brown streaking,
> etc you mention it is a merlin. When perched, merlins really have
> kestral-ish proportions, it is only in flight that the muscularity
> of a merlin shows itself in an obvious way. That long accipiter tail
> is pretty obvious if you're viewing a sharpie.
>
>
> - Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
> Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
> http://donb.photo.net
>