Yes, yes, I know it might not have been a hawk. Raptor, okay?
Anyway, I saw it take off pretty close to me. The underside was creamy colored, possibly flecked, with large black bands on the underneath of the tail, and horizontal markings coming from the eyes kind of like what one sees on ancient Egyptian art. I tried looking for pictures but had no real luck, I couldn’t find a good database. It was in a semi-urban area on the border of Wisconsin and Illinois, if that helps.
So, what did I see?
Start here @
Hmm…it might indeed be the broad-winged hawk. Thanks.
The common hawk in the upper Midwest is the Red Tailed Hawk. Light colored belly, racing stripe at the eye and rust colored on the top of the tail. Just from your location I’d guess that there is an 80% chance that you saw a Red Tail. They do migrate in flocks of 50 to 100 in the autumn spiraling together on the up-drafts. Very impressive.
Here is some information on the beast.. Apparently there are several “races” with darker and lighter colorings. This is the classic “chicken hawk.”
Um, no, sorry, SG, the big obvious horizontal bands on the tail are classic diagnostic broad-winged hawk field markings, “field markings” being the technical birdwatcher’s term for those markings that jump out at you in that split-second as the bird zooms past before it disappears, and “diagnostic” being the technical term for “Yup, that’s it”. It’s what your eye picks up immediately, a sort of snap photo, and the red-tailed hawk doesn’t have that. The red-tailed’s field markings are the dark belly band and the pink tail.
The red-shouldered has much fainter tail banding, and the only other North American buteos (“hawk-like hawks” for you lay people) with jump-out-at-you-on-the-fly tail banding are the ones in the desert Southwest and Mexico.
Broad-winged.
You saw a neat hawk, Spongess. They’re not particularly rare, but they’re not your usual cow pasture tree-and-fencepost-sitters, either. Congrats. 
And, um, no, sorry, not exactly. Although some farmers may have referred to all large-ish hawks as “chicken hawks”, the classic “chicken hawk” is the Cooper’s hawk, which, if I may be a bit tendentious, is an accipiter, not a buteo. Coops generally prey on birds, which is why they find chickens to be such irresistible targets.
And more observant farmers did notice precisely what kind of hawk was carrying off their chickens, and dubbed the Coop the “Chicken hawk”. And did their best to exterminate it.
It’s quite late in the year to see a broad-winged hawk there - most of them are south of the US by now. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but that far north the broad-wing has changed from a common to a rare bird.
The eye markings suggest that this might have been a Coopers hawk or just possibly a Goshawk.
And here’s the Cooper’s hawk.
When did you see it? If it was within the last month or so, given your location I would be very surprised if it were a Broad-winged Hawk, since almost all of them have migrated out of the US by mid-October.
I am running an Ocean-to-Ocean raptor watch here in Panama this year (which we also ran last year). Most of the Broad-winged and Swainson’s Hawks, and most North American Turkey Vultures, pass through here on their way to South America. (Last year we counted 3.1 million raptors here in 6 weeks.) Nearly all Broad-wings have passed through Panama before November 1. Last year we saw only a few thousand here after that date, out of about 930,000 counted.
Red-shouldered Hawk also has a banded tail (showing several narrow bands, instead of the single broad band of the Broad-winged), and juveniles would show an eye-line as you describe (which the Broad-wing usually lacks). Your locality is within the normal wintering range of Red shouldered, so it is much more likely to be that if it is in fact a Buteo.
Other band-tailed raptors that are possibilities (although the bands are not a prominent as in the two previous species) are Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawk, Northern Goshawk, and Merlin. Given the description of the “Egyptian-like” facial pattern I am guessing that there is a good chance that it is a Merlin (Falco columbarius). The Merlin is a small falcon and has a fainter version of the face pattern of hawk-headed Horus (actually modeled on a falcon.]
Peregine Falcon is another possibility, though the tail banding is fainter than Merlin.
How big was the hawk? I live in southern WI and we have several American Kestrels around our farm. I always thought they looked vaguely Egyptian.
The Kestrel also has the falcon face-pattern, but it doesn’t have large black bands on the underside of the tail.
That’s all other things being equal, and weather patterns being normal. However, in the Midwest, we’re having an unusually warm and dry summer and fall.
It would be extremely rare for a Broadwing to be that far north this late in the season, no matter what the local weather conditions. A Broadwing that hasn’t made it farther south than Illinois by now is probably not going to survive through to next season. They start south in August, well before the weather turns cold, so that unseasonally warm weather is unlikely to have affected them very much. The peak of migration in the mid-West is in mid-September. By the third week in September they are in south Texas. They turn up here in early October.
It’s not impossible that it is a Broadwing, of course, it just would be very rare at that time and place. As I said, Red-shouldered is far more probable. But from the description, I’m thinking Merlin.
