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Goshawk -- second time?



Pete Worthington's sighting of an adult Goshawk near Simpsonville SC on
September 20 makes a sighting of mine 4 days earlier, on September 16,
not far away, especially intriguing.

On September 16 I had climbed Whiteside Mountain a short way east of
Highlands NC with a group of students from my fall-semester class.  It
was two days after a front had passed, and the light northerly wind
created an updraft over the mountain.  One or two adult Peregrines put
on a fantastic show for everybody.  Presumably they were the pair that
nests at this location.  A trickle of migrating hawks passed overhead in
the updraft -- 12 Broad-wings, 3 Cooper's, 2 Sharp-shins in about an
hour.  There were Turkey Vultures and Common Ravens soaring around the
mountain also.  This location has rarely yielded many hawks in the past
on September weekends.  

The Goshawk caught my attention as soon as I spotted it.  At first it
soared high over the crest but soon descended in a steep dive to take a
swoop past a soaring Broad-wing.  The two birds then soared side by side
for several minutes before I lost them.  I had my new (well, actually
newly purchased but slightly used) Zeiss 10x40s.  The sky was cloudless,
the air exceptionally clear, and the light behind me about 4:00 in the
afternoon, and the bird not quite directly overhead.

The bird was an adult Goshawk.  It was clearly larger than the
Broad-wing next to it.  It had broad rounded wings, proportionately
longer than the Cooper's Hawks seen a few minutes before; its head
projected relatively less than the Cooper's; its long, narrow tail, held
closed as it soared, appeared dark underneath (although I was not close
enough to see details).  It had conspicuous white under-tail coverts and
lower belly (again details of feathers not visible), pale gray
underparts, and dark cap (white eye-line not visible). The under surface
of the remiges were barred and slightly duskier toward the tips, but
there was no dark bar along the margin of the secondaries (which, in
addition to the bird's shape, eliminated male Northern Harrier) and
indeed no other dark marks below (no patagial mark or blackish tips of
primaries, for instance).  I have seen many soaring Goshawks in Europe,
but none recently.  Other accipiters and all buteos seem excluded, and
the shape and coloration below seem compatible only with adult Goshawk. 
The size comparison with the Broad-wing suggested it was probably a male.

I was astonished, needless to say.  Correspondence with Helmut Mueller,
who is currently in the midst of his 50th year banding migrating raptors
on Lake Michigan at Cedar Grove, confirmed that neither last year nor
this year is a Goshawk-year.  Furthermore, adults move southward later
in the season than do immatures.  On the other hand, there are scattered
and infrequent reports of adult Goshawks in the southern Appalachians in
summer.  There was even a poorly documented nesting pair in NC many
decades ago (I can find little information about this observation --
does anyone know more?).  There seem to be suggestive summer records for
the mountains in TN and VA.  The southernmost definite nesting record is
apparently WV (I have not conducted a thorough search, however).

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that an adult Goshawk seems to have
appeared not far away four days later in SC.  The same bird?  A mate?

My apologies for not posting this observation sooner -- life sometimes
gets hectic!

Haven Wiley, Chapel Hill
rhwiley@email.unc.edu