Goshawk thoughts

[phukan@email.unc.edu (shantanu phukan)]

Dear All:

I have received much sensible advice on the possible Goshawk, the most
sensible being to let it go. And I will officially let it go, but
before I do so I have a few other thoughts to help those who, like
Bill Sanderson, may want to venture forth in search for the bird.

On Jack Peachy's advice I went and looked very closely at Pete Dunne's
Hawks in Flight and also at some other books which show actual
photographs of Goshawks and Cooper's hawks.

This clarified that the bird I saw was not an adult (whether a Goshawk
or a Cooper's); I saw an immature.

Pete Dunne mentions that if an immature then think about the breast
colour and if it is appears dirty then it is a Goshawk, but if whitish
and clear then it is a Cooper's. For what its worth, in my momentary
sighting of this bird's breast I did not make out much white, in fact
I saw no very clear colour. This, to me translates as 'dirty.' And
yes, these probably are the flailings of a wistful mind.

Also the bird was definitely barrel-chested and did not have the
hurried, dashing flight of a Sharpie or Cooper's Hawk.

And now I will let it go, counting it neither on my life nor my year
list (until, that is, in my dreams tonight it is revealed to me by the
ghost of Roger Tory Peterson just what it was)

Shantanu Phukan
Chapel Hill, NC