Montreal Bird of Prey ID

Clearpreso

Hey guys,

So I am in Montreal at the moment on hols and keep seeing v.large birds of prey soaring/circling about the city and local hill/mountain. I got a (poor) snap of one yesterday and it should be here http://twitpic.com/5deb56

They are pretty big, deffo bigger than a large crow etc, and they are awfully good at soaring.

They are very dark in colour from what I see, certainly darker than most BOP I have seen.

Any thoughts?

Traonach

Clearpreso wrote: »

Hey guys,

So I am in Montreal at the moment on hols and keep seeing v.large birds of prey soaring/circling about the city and local hill/mountain. I got a (poor) snap of one yesterday and it should be here http://twitpic.com/5deb56

They are pretty big, deffo bigger than a large crow etc, and they are awfully good at soaring.

They are very dark in colour from what I see, certainly darker than most BOP I have seen.

Any thoughts?

Educated guess, but I think I might be correct:
Juvenile broad winged hawk. During the summer they moult the outer primaries creating a translucent panel, as you can see well from your photo.
Here's one I photographed in Costa Rica.

Clearpreso

Cool, thanks for the input, the only thing that is confusing me is the darkness of the birds I am seeing, although from a distance, and depending on the light I guess things can look a bit different than they do up close.

Traonach

Clearpreso wrote: »

Cool, thanks for the input, the only thing that is confusing me is the darkness of the birds I am seeing, although from a distance, and depending on the light I guess things can look a bit different than they do up close.

You get different colour morphs with Broad winged hawk. Some can be almost black and others almost white on underparts.
All North American hawks are extremely variable in colour. To confuse the matter Americans call their buzzard (Buteo species) Hawks. The Broad winged hawk is a buzzard species not a true hawk species.

mi91

i've seen those at midday on the 6th of july
at about 10 meters from the ground at 'Place de la Cité' (Prince-Arthur / Park ave)..
Some guys were working on the building so i
guessed they must have upset one mother..)

and they were also dark from below.. (reddish brown.. . )

Red-tailed hawk ??

Clearpreso

I saw them when I was on top of Mont Royal, but also when I was downtown they were soaring around buildings.

They were really really dark though, I saw red tailed hawks in Utah, but these looked pretty much black to me, might have just been the lighting or whatever.

Great sight to see anyway.

Tchernobill

Hi, I,m from Montreal. They are Peregrine Falcon, they have they nests on the tallest buildings of downtown, the city placed them there cause pigeon are candies to them