Well maybe not that big. But if it is what we think it was, it is for sure a “Lifer” bird.
Meaning once in a lifetime siting for a birder.
The Facts:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
While hiking the Geoffrey Platts Trail in the TNC Patagonia – Sonoita Creek preserve, we saw this bird from about 75 yards away, he was on another peak and we had a valley between us, he was about 40′ higher in elevation.
It was 9:20am. I used a Pentax Optio W90 camera zoomed to the max.
I took only 1 picture.
We used Pentax 9×20 6.7 binoculars and watched him for about 10 mins. The sun got too hot so we continued our hike. We was able to see the sun off his breast from about 1/4 mile away.
We both saw red around the neck area. a very square tail, we believe light in color but with no red on the tail. We joked “it looked like a Penguin in a tree”.
May 14, 2013 – TNC – Patagonia – Sonoita Creek Preserve – Geoffrey Platts Trail – Possible the most “controversial” picture I have ever taken. This could be a “bigfoot” moment.
Using Photoshop we was able to zoom in and see what appears to be the red we both saw around the neck.
May 14, 2013 – TNC – Patagonia – Sonoita Creek Preserve – Geoffrey Platts Trail – Possible the most “controversial” picture I have ever taken. This could be a “bigfoot” moment. Zoomed in with help from Photoshop.
The question is, what is it?
We didn’t know at the time, “assumed” it was a “Black Hawk” (A dumb ass guess if you ever seen a Black Hawk) I start looking in “The Sibley Guid to Birds” which is pretty much considered the “bird bible”.
The only bird that comes close to what we saw, is the Short-tailed Hawk.
Seeing a Short-tailed Hawk in this area is almost as rare as seeing a Bigfoot.
So I went to talk to a Larry Morgan, the caretaker of “Patons” and a bird expert. I showed him the one picture I had. I also showed him the zoomed Photoshop pic and he is like me, unsure. He suggested I contact the local bird expert Matt Brown.
I talked to Matt Brown and he is also unsure. He said if we was at the 8,000′ elevation he was say yes, but we was only at 4,300′. He said he would go look for it himself the next day and let me know.
Wednesday May 15, 2013
We have the Portland, OR Audubon Society visited and the group leader who I had met a few days prior, I believe he introduced himself as the President of the Portland Audubon but sadly, I forgot his name. When I showed him the picture of the wide shot, before I could even say anything else, he said “Short-Tailed Hawk”.
I asked him if he was sure, and why so sure, he told me he has been to Costa Rica many times and they are all over there. I started to describe what we saw, that the wide shot didn’t show, such as the red on the neck, he smiled and said “yep”.
I call Matt Brown. Matt went over and took a few pictures of what he thinks is a Red-tailed Hawk which is very common here. However, he didn’t have a good picture of it either. But he said it looked different then most Red-tailed Hawks, but he believes what he saw and what I saw, was a Red-tailed Hawk.
Matt Brown said he would submit the pictures to other birders and see what happens.
Saturday May 18, 2013
Matt Brown emails me, telling me he has had over 500 views, but only 3 replies.
2 of the 3 “think it is a Red-Tail” the other one is “unsure, but doesn’t think it sit’s like a Red-tail”.
So there you go. I’ve no idea what this bird is.
I didn’t want the extra weight of the video camera which has a 40x zoom vs a 5x. I normally take multiple pictures of what I see, but since it was so far, I didn’t think it would even be this good and I didn’t want to waste the pixels.
We got our new Canon Rebel T3 with 75mm x 300mm in the mail the next day.
Never fails.