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Henderson County/Rough-legged Hawk



Folks:
        This AM at about 9:00AM Marilyn Westphal and I had what we are
certain is a dark phase ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK on Hooper Lane in Mills River.
The bird show an obvious white tail with a very wide dark terminal band on
the tail with a white fringe.  It has rounded, pointed wings.  It clearly
shows the distinctive round dark circles at the wrists on the underside of
the wings.  The underside shoulders are very dark and the trailing edge of
the wings have a dark trailing edge.  The rest of the underwings are very
white.  We saw the bird on two occasions hover above a weedy field. In
flight, the wing beats appear to be smooth and shallow, it sometimes shows a
slight dihedral and other times it shows a crook in its wings. The best
place to see the bird is on Hooper Lane near the Mills River Bridge in the
early morning.
    Simon Thompson has seen the bird on 2 occasions this past week but
couldn't see the bird well enough to call it, and Bob Olthoff was with
Marilyn and I yesterday, when we observed the bird for 10-15 minutes but we
wanted to be eally sure before we made a call.  I obtained good video of the
bird today, and there is no doubt in our minds, that it is in fact a dark
phase Rough-legged Hawk.

Good luck,

Wayne
Wayne K. Forsythe
245 Stonebrook Drive
Hendersonville, N.C. 28791
wforsythe@a-o.com
828-697-6628