Thanks, Philip: hard is correct- my question mark should have been a
rather more explicit request for ID help!
When taking the photo(s) I was about 3 m away from the hawk but my
sight was partially obscured by the fence, tap and odd bits of foliage
and I hardly dared move (or breathe) to try to get a better angle. (No
binos, so this 12x magnification was only visible post hoc in the
photo, not on the spot). I had very brief sights of it in flight both
into and out of the garden - but both were primarily back views and the
size/shape of the dangling Myna rather dominated my attention.
Afterwards, I checked handbooks, COG photo gallery etc, and also
compared (mentally) to 2 previous similar hawk sightings on kills in
both Toms Cresc and Chaffey Cresc over the last few years...C
Sparrowhawk is my tentative best bet, but I'ld welcome other
opinions/suggestions.
Robin Hide
Philip Veerman wrote:
The photo
from Robin shows just how hard
it can be to identify this hawk. Ordinarily you would say it’s a fairly
good photo but nonetheless the really diagnostic features still leave
me
unsure. The size relative to the Myna suggests it to be a female Collared
Sparrowhawk or male Brown Goshawk, so that doesn’t
help much, the end of the
tail doesn’t reveal its shape so no clues there,
the brow ridge is small and that just suggests a CS, the beak is fairly
small relative
to the head and that too suggests a CS, although the toes appear sturdy
like a
BG but you can’t see all the middle one, so that is also unclear. I’d
go 70/30 odds on it being a CS for those reason and most importantly
because
that is Robin’s suggestion and he saw it so got extra impressions than
what
I see, which is just that photo (which is much better than any photo I
have ever
taken of any hawk).
Philip Veerman
24 Castley Circuit
Kambah ACT 2902
|
|
