Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:25:31 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Tom Beal Subject: Imm. No. Goshawk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Looked out the kitchen window at about 3 this afternoon and saw a large accipiter on the fence. Didn't appreciate how large until it extended its wings and flew into our now 30' former Christmas tree. Several birds flew out, but could see the bird still hopping around the inside of the foliage. Then out popped a squirrel onto the fence, followed by the bird. The squirrel dropped to the ground on the other side and the hawk sat there for a minute. Got very good look, from notes am sure it was an Imm. Northern Goshawk (never seen one before). Then the hawk opened in winged and sort of 'parachuted' to the ground. The squirrel ran under the fence and back to the top. After staring at the squirrel for maybe 30 sec, the hawk returned to the top of the fence. Now it got strange, maybe the squirrel sensed this bird didn't know what it was doing, but it started inching towards the hawk and the hawk started acting nervous. At this point I ran to get the video camera, but when I returned to the window, only the squirrel was there. Notes: distinctive supercillium whitish 'collar' around back of neck thick dark streaks on off white breast and flanks thick banding on tail, bands had white borders thin band of white on tip of tail huge talons Any id tips? Tom Beal Glenn Dale (just west of Bowie), MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================