Louisa County, VA, 2/22/16

All photos are © Marshall Faintich

With reports of a Rough-legged Hawk off of East Green Springs Road in Louisa County, Walt Childs and I headed east to look for it. We were in that same area last December helping with the Christmas Bird Count there. It was fairly overcast when we arrived around 1 p.m., and soon after we starting looking for this hawk, we spotted it in a distant tree. I really didn't have a chance to calibrate camera settings for the gray sky, but the hawk took off soon after we stopped, and I got the shots that I could.


Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk

As soon as the Rough-legged Hawk had flown out of sight, a female Northern Harrier appeared low over the same field.


Northern Harrier

We continued east on East Green Springs Road and the back west on East Jack Jouett Road looking the Rough-legged Hawk. A Cooper's Hawk flew by quickly, and we saw three Red-tailed Hawks.


Cooper's Hawk


Red-tailed Hawk


Red-tailed Hawk


Red-tailed Hawk

We drove the same loop a second time, and saw two more Red-tailed Hawks. One of them had a very light-colored head. We saw two more hawks perched in distant trees, but at least one of the was a Red-tailed, and the other was too far away to determine the species.


Red-tailed Hawk


Red-tailed Hawk



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