Rough-legged hawk.

30 November 2014. On a mild, yet monochromatic, day I walked various sometimes-birdy stretches of the perimeter of the large industrial harbour that dominates our local geography. It was warm enough but, the bright orange berries of Bittersweet notwithstanding, I was quite conscious of how much natural colour had drained away. It was, as I noted above, a monochromatic day.

Interestingly, the few bird species I made note of were low on colour too. To wit: Several Horned Grebes in their winter greys and whites instead of summer gold and chestnut; A Northern Mockingbird, always pearly grey; A handful of Hooded Mergansers, the young ones in dusky brownish grey and the handsome adult males in black and white; And a young Common Loon, so people-shy that it seemed reluctant to admit to any buoyancy, showing only its mottled grey brown back.

A howling west wind, whipping up whitecaps, kept a windsurfer happy and I watched him for a while. I wondered about the efficacy of his dry-suit, the cold on his exposed hands and face and the advisability of spending any time whatsoever doused in the waters of this famously polluted industrial harbour. As I turned to leave, I noticed a Rough-legged Hawk high overhead making its way efficiently against the wind. At first I thought I was a Northern Harrier because it was so strikingly long-winged. But through binoculars I could see the diagnostic black belly and under-wing patches that mark a Rough-legged Hawk. I suspect the effort and dynamics of flying into the wind accentuated the relative long-winged-ness of this species, a characteristic that gives them a rather languid, floppy appearance when hunting low over winter fields.

I was glad of this Rough-legged Hawk for adding some metaphorical colour to the day even though splotches of black had been the keys to my identification of it.