Sunday, December 29, 2013

Rough-legged Buzzard

Rough-legged Buzzard Buteo lagopus
Waterloo County, ON
28 December 2013

    The annual Linwood Christmas Bird Count is usually the highest, or close to the highest, for raptor concentrations on the continent. Among the species located in this area are Rough-legged Hawks, visiting from their high arctic nesting areas, to spend the winter here, in what must seem to them benign conditions, with abundant rodent prey.
    This is a difficult species to photograph. It is very wary of humans, and flies at the slightest interaction with birders it perceives as being too close.
    While the following pictures are hardly of superior quality, they do show a magnificent dark morph bird we located in a field. Dark morph plumage is very much in the minority of birds found here. You can clearly see the feathered tarsus, so common on birds from the far north.
    The concentration of Rough-legged Hawks is one of the very special benefits of living in this area.
    I might point out that this year there has been a heavy influx of Snowy Owls Bubo scandiaca also, and we (Fraser Gibson, Ken Quantz and I) started our day's count with nine Eastern Screech Owls Megascops asio.  



  
David M. Gascoigne,
David M. Gascoigne,

I'm a life long birder. My interests are birds, nature, reading, books, outdoors, travel, food and wine.

6 comments:

  1. Hi David!
    Very interesting post!
    You make me discover this species nesting high up in the northern regions!
    It must be a thrill to see them arriving to winter in your area.
    Such an open space musn't be easy to get closer for pics!!
    From what I can see, it looks much like our european buzzards and must probably show color differences from one individual to another.
    I wish you a happy New Year again and many more great observations! :)

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  2. Another exciting bird sighting ! This is a stately looking bird.

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  3. What a mighty bird it is. Really great!

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  4. Always a wonderful bird to see.

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  5. What a wonderful bird. You catched them well.
    Best regards, Synnöve

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  6. A bird very much on my wish list David. They turn up rarely in the UK, more so on our west coast but I'd love to see a real one - sometimes Buto buteo is claimed as Rough-legged (Buzzard). Your pictures clearly show the rough legs - something I'll look out for.

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