The great hawk of the North has made its way into our area once again.
This is a yearly occurrence. The great hawk appears here about the time the grass dies back. It stays as long as hunting is good, moving farther south if it's not, then returning to its nesting grounds in spring.
This is the rough-legged hawk, and it occurs across the Northern Hemisphere.
The rough-legged hawk is a bird of open country, avoiding forested areas unless there are large clearings.
The Red River Valley is well suited to such a bird.
ADVERTISEMENT
The rough-legged hawk is only one of a suite of predators that moves south at the start of winter.
Another, more familiar, is the snowy owl. So far this year, I haven't heard reports of snowy owls, but rough-legged hawks are present along my route from Gilby, N.D., to Grand Forks, and on a drive across North Dakota last week, I saw them frequently.
The rough-legged hawk is a large and obvious bird with distinctive plumage and behavior. It surprises me that it is not more widely known.
Probably, this is because of the tendency to lump all hawks together and give them the common label, "hawk." This doesn't happen to the snowy owl because the snowy is the only owl most people are likely to see, and anyway, its white plumage separates it from every other owl.
Not so the rough-legged hawk.
Like other hawks, it appears at a glance to be a brown bird, albeit a big one. Probably, many rough-legged hawks are dismissed that quickly.
It's relatively easy to be sure that you're seeing a rough-legged hawk instead of any other kind, however. First, the time of year is a clue. Open-country hawks that nest here generally migrate. Swainson's hawk, a common summer hawk, goes all the way to Argentina.
The red-tailed hawk, another nester, may linger into early winter, but by and large, this species too is gone by November.
ADVERTISEMENT
In any case, only a little familiarity with hawks is needed to tell these hawks apart. The red-tailed hawk is a much lighter bird, and it flies with steady wing beats and quite often soars. It never hovers.
The rough-legged hawk can hover over one spot for quite a long time - the only large hawk with this ability.
Rough-legged hawks are generally rather dark and they are quite large, so it is possible to confuse them with immature eagles. A closer look should make the size difference apparent, since even young eagles are much larger.
Readily visible details of plumage will identify the rough-legged hawk, as well. It has a white rump, for one thing, and that shows up quite a distance.
The harrier, or marsh hawk, has a white rump, too, but it is a much smaller bird with its own distinctive rocking flight pattern. Harriers are pale birds, pale gray in males and pale brown or chestnut in females.
In flight, the rough-legged hawk shows off a black and white pattern on the bottom side. The belly is dark, the tips of the wings are dark and there's a dark patch in the elbow of the wing.
No other hawk has this pattern.
Perched birds present a bigger problem, but their size and their overall dark color will identify them. The head provides another clue. It often appears quite light - though never pure white as in the bald eagle.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rough-legged hawks are not hard to find. A drive along a rural road that crosses grasslands or marshy areas should produce a rough-legged hawk.
Here the hawks find small mammals, especially mice and voles, that sustain them even in rough weather.
My own drive on Friday turned up another northern predator. This was the northern shrike, often called the butcher bird. I actually saw two of them within a couple of miles of each other.
More about this fascinating bird in another column.
Jacobs is editor and publisher of the Herald.
