What did I see?

by Catherine
(London, Ontario, Canada )

Good Morning!

As I was sitting here having my coffee and watching the snow fluttering down in my back yard, I noticed a large bird sitting on the T bar of my clothes line, and realized that is why I did not see any sign of the smaller birds at my several feeders.

I live in the Byron area of London, Ontario. At first I thought it was an Owl (I don't know my large birds at all!), then, after it turned it's head, I realized that it was probably a Hawk or Falcon.

I'm thinking it might be in the Hawk family when I saw the photo of your Red Tailed Hawks. My husband tried to take some video of it, and if I am able to get a photo onto my computer, I'll try and send one in.

Meanwhile, I'll try to describe it a bit and see if anyone might have an idea so I can look it up to see if that is what it was. As I said, it looked similar in shape to the Red Tailed Hawk, but the tail was wide bands of black and gray.

The underside of the bird (from face and whole belly area) was a light colour, kind of beige colour.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance, for your help.

I just discovered this website a few minutes ago, while looking for birds of prey in southern Ontario. What a great website! I'll be spending a lot of time on it, discovering this part of Ontario. :-)

Hello Catherine, thanks for your submission, and for your kind words, I love to hear when people like our website!

This website started out as a hobby for me, a place where people could read and learn about this part of the country, and now we get around a thousand people each day, from all around the world, who find information on this site!

Anyhow, I'm not sure what the bird was that you saw, but I think you're right, it was some kind of Hawk - the Red Tails stay around here all winter and I have seen several of them around St Thomas and London area, so that could be it.