Hunting for Hawks

Yesterday we decided to go hunting for hawks along highway # 105 in the Maugerville, Sheffield area of New Brunswick. It was a good day to choose for the trees were very beautiful, with a frost coated covering, especially when the sun shone. And the first hawk sighting we had was of a light morph Rough legged Hawk. Its white belly really stood out when it was perched in a tree. It was quite a distance away but I had brought along my telephoto 400 mm lens and it proved to be quite an asset in our hawk photography yesterday. We considered we were off to a good start and so with high hopes we drove on down the highway.

When looking for hawks along this highway the thing is to look for a dark shape perched in a tree. Our second hawk sighting came right away, but as the sun was shining directly at my camera when I tried to photograph this second sighting ,making it difficult at first to id the hawk.We were able to get a better view as this hawk flew on down the highway and perched on a frost covered branch of another tree which reached over the highway. Were we happy? 'Yes!" Our day was proving to be quite successful! and we were able to take another picture of it! As it appeared to be so dark, we erroneously thought it was perhaps a dark phase morph of the rough legged hawk. Photo Shop proved us wrong.

After I downloaded and lightened the photo when back home we discovered. it was another light phase rough-legged as we could now see the white markings on its upper chest and lower belly parts. We were on a roll, on the look out for more hawks!. Already two light-phased Rough legged hawks seen! in just a very short time period! What next? There was more to come!

Continuing on down the highway we saw another dark shape in a tree off at a distance bordering the back of an adjacent field to the highway... Another hawk? perhaps. Shall we say hawk # 3? We then spied another dark shape in another tree which was closer to the highway and I was able to get some pictures of this other dark shape in the tree. But it wasn't a hawk!
We had suspected this second dark shape wasn't a hawk as it appeared to be quite large andalthough it did have white markings on it, but not like a rough legged's markings. It was an Eagle! please click to enlarge the picture below so we may share with you what we had seen. It was a magnificent sighting.Oh happy day! We were having a wonderful time! We drove on down the highway and turned by the bridge crossing the river there. We saw no more intriguing black shapes in trees around there and we decided to return to Oromocto to do our intended grocery shopping. On our return back up the highway, the Eagle we had seen was still perched there so we took more photos of it. It looked rather scruffy and rugged looking perched among the frost covered branches. Before we left the area we spied another dark shape in a tree as shown below.,. But another day might reveal what?! Our hawk sighting appetite had been appeased for the day? We hope you have enjoyed reading about and viewing pictures of our successful 'hawk and eagle day!'