At 08:33 AM 12/22/98 -0800, Wes Jansen wrote:
>>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.

Pigeon hawk is a better description of its strong, pumping flight than of
its typical prey. It's a bird that takes smaller prey. At to me, its
strong flight pattern looks more like mourning dove, though maybe because
I'm used to wimpy fat city pigeons that flap a time or two then soar with
their wings in a high "V" :)


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net