Today just before 1 pm, Lisa Shannon and I were driving south on US 29 at
about 55 mph towards Charlottesville. In Fauquier County about 2 miles
north of the interchange for Warrenton, we independently noticed a dark
flying bird over / to the right of the roadway. Lisas attention was drawn
to it first as it banked; she noted silvery flight feathers and dark
underwing coverts on what seemed to be a crow-like bird that was flapping
more than a Turkey Vulture usually does. After it had finished banking and
was sailing away from us, my attention was drawn to it. I noted an all dark
bird giving me a tail-on view that was the size of a crow but neither shaped
nor behaving like a crow: it was flapping some and sailing some and showed
no color other than black. As we drew closer to it, the bird wheeled and I
noted in my brief view that the underside of the flight feathers showed
darkish silvery and the fanned tail had two distinct white bands. Otherwise
everything was black. The bird was the size and shape of a Broad-winged
Hawk. As I noted this, we passed under and a little to the left of the hawk
at a distance of perhaps 100 to 125 feet and possibly less. Lisa was not
able to pull over as we were being tailgated. We kept on going as we were
running a little late and there was a goodly number of cars on our side of
the road. The sun was to our left roughly 45 degrees from our forward
motion and the bird was well under 45 degrees to our right; in fact it was
almost straight in front of us (and above the road) at one point. I do not
know how many seconds we collectively had the bird under observation,
certainly the time was less than one minute. Lisa saw the hawk before I did
and I watched it after she was no longer able to. This was the only
airborne buteo we saw all day. The sky was essentially clear and the winds
were light; the high temperature was about 85 degrees in Washington DC and I
am sure at 1 pm it was over 80.
Dark morph Broadwings are quite rare in the east; I have never seen one
before. I have seen many Broad-winged Hawks from moving cars in many
different weather and lighting conditions and none of them have ever
appeared all dark. This naked eye observation from a moving car is
unfortunately not the best circumstance in which to see an unusual species.
I wrote the description after arriving back home at 8 pm and without looking
at any books.
Rob Hilton
aimophila10@xxxxxxxxxxx
Silver Spring, Md.
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