Whoa...

[stoutfellow]

Although the St. Louis area is a good place for birding, I'm no more than a casual practitioner; I don't go looking for birds, but I do like to keep my eyes open. I've seen a good variety of birds - three kinds of heron, three kinds of blackbird, wrens, swifts, plover, mockingbirds... One thing I haven't seen a lot of, though, is raptors. (Once, while biking, I saw a peregrine - beautiful animal! - perched on a street sign; utterly unruffled, it watched me pedal past at a distance of no more than ten feet.) This afternoon, though, on the way to work, I glanced up and saw an unmistakeable silhouette, the thick body and broad wings of one of the larger hawks. (The sight immediately pulled to mind an illustration from Peterson's, accompanied by the words "genus Buteo". What that image was doing in memory, I don't know.) I couldn't tell what species it was, and couldn't wait for long to find out. In the few seconds that I watched, though, it banked slightly and I caught a flash of red from the upper surface of its tail. When I get home, I'll pull out my guides and see if I can get a firmer ID. With or without ID, though, the sight was thrilling. That something so heavy-looking should be able to fly so effortlessly seems almost unfair...