I found this hawk this morning east of the Pintail Lake trail. Unfortunately the tree was perched in a tree well over a hundred feet away (more like 150 feet). Due to that distance, the mostly cloudy sky and my handholding the camera, I had to use a high ISO setting and fast speed so the pics came out pretty dark and I was unable to lighten them any better than as shown without distorting them. The hawk is blackish with a wide white band around the middle of the tail, a narrow white terminal tail band, it has a yellowish cere, wingtips are shorter than tail tip, and it appears to have long legs. These fit the description for a Common Black Hawk. Also it called and retrospectively it sounds like the call of a Common Black Hawk. What I have some problem with is the white feathers that can be seen in the last two pics that appear to be in the area of the upper legs that are whitish which are not consistent with extensive description of Common Black Hawk in Raptors of Western North Am...
