This seemed like a very long day! 

It started out with beautiful weather. It ended with beautiful weather. We drove past miles and miles of beautiful, snow covered, fields. But, raptors?  What raptors? The numbers were certainly down! 

We saw five Rough-legged Hawks and one Red-Tailed Hawk!  In 94 miles!  That’s one raptor every 15 miles. We did see one other raptor, which I’ll get to in a bit. No American Kestrels. No Northern Harriers. In Mansfield, the resident Merlin did not show its face. 

Even though we scanned every single rock pile and every single field we drove by, there were no Snowy Owls and no Gyrfalcons. It was one of those days.

We saw seven mule deer on a route where we usually see 20 to 30. But we did see one pheasant fly across the road, three porcupines sleeping In trees and three coyotes!

As we drove the absolute LAST quarter mile of this survey route, we pulled up short and said, “What’s THAT?!” Our heads turned to see a VERY large bird sitting on a rock not far from the road. We both said, “He’s huge!” 

I stopped the car, got out to retrieve my camera from the backseat (which I had put away because I thought we were finished), and hoped it didn’t fly away before I got to take a picture. It sat there for a few seconds while I snapped a couple photos and then it lifted off and away it went. 

At first glance I thought it was a Golden Eagle. On second thought, maybe a subadult Bald Eagle.  I knew I’d have to get the pictures home and look at them on my computer before I could figure out what I was looking at.

After arriving home, I downloaded the pictures to my computer and dug out my hawk books. I am really inexperienced when it comes to Golden Eagles.  I have only seen one about 4-5 times in my life, and don’t feel at all confident about identifying them, or differentiating between a Golden and a subadult Bald Eagle. After reading and looking at all the pictures, I thought it was a first or second year Bald Eagle.

I sent an email asking for help to Jeff Fleischer, of East Cascades Audubon Society, who is running the raptor survey project, and also posted some pictures on the Raptor ID FaceBook group. I want to thank Jeff and the folks in the Raptor ID group for their help in learning how to ID this bird. I really appreciate it.

What we have here is a subadult (probably 1-2 year) Bald Eagle.  Here is the criteria on which this judgement was made.

It has a large head and beak, larger than a GOEA.

The dark eyes are starting to lighten.

The nape is sharp, two-toned (indicting having molted), as distinct from the dark back.

There are no feathers on feet (tarsi).

The mottled white on the underwing and body is characteristic of a subadult BAEA.  There is too much white for a subadult GOEA.

The tail was mottled.  It did not have the definitive white band with black terminal band of a subadult GOEA.

Here is a summary of what we saw today:
Rough-legged Hawk – 5
Red-tailed Hawk – 1
Bald Eagle: subadult – 1