rough-legged hawk / red-tailed hawk

A few times this week i have seen the light morph of the rough-legged hawk, i do recognize it clearly now; the dark patch on the underwing called wrist patch.
When this a dark morph one can see the square patch in the photo that i lit up.
or is this the red-tailed hawk?


Alaska highway, April 28, 2013

Ring -necked Duck

Today, April 28, 2013  i went to the mouth of the Takhini river again.
And Mary pointed some Ring-necked Ducks out that i hadn't noticed yesterday.

Today swans (6)
ring-necked ducks
northern shovelers
barrow's goldeneyes
common goldeneyes
buffleheads
pintails
and down river a pair of mergansers

four swans arrived as we got there,
The two swans yesterday, had yellow/orange stained heads, compared to two pure white birds i saw here two weeks earlier.
Now the four new ones even stained darker then the two already there.
Apparently it is the where they come from, if they have been digging around in the mud in iron rich waters.

Northern Shovelers

Northern Shovelers at the mouth of the Takhini river at Kusawa Lake
April 27, 2013

June 28, 2013

east of the 911-pond

Goldeneyes

Common Goldeneye

Barrow's Goldeneye

swimming together at the mouth of the takhini river at kusawa lake

April 27, 2013

Barrow's Goldeneyes

July 9 2013

teapot pond, mendenhall subd.

bufflehead

2 bufflehead
the mouth of the Takhini river at Kusawa Lake
April 27, 2013

horned lark

Horned lark
April 27, 2013
Kusawa road

snow bunting

ha! i have a photo of snow buntings. they are the first to arrive in the spring, mostly in big flocks, not so much this year, but always they are very fleaty. the whole flock moving erraticly in unison. The big yukon bird book says migration is mostly over by the end of  April, not this year, there is still a lot of snow. But this bir will move on farther north for the summer.

April 27 2013
Kusawa road

Northern Harrier

April 21, 2013

Alaska hwy km 1500

Rough-legged Hawk

April 21, 2013.
Alaska highway around kilometre 1500

I saw a lot of hawks yesterday, they seem to be all here now, being on their way North

I had a bird book with me, and at one point i actually saw the dark square patches on the light underwing, as the book tells me only the rough-legged hawk has.

bluebirds or solitaires

 at the mouth of the Takhini river at  Kusawa Lake

a few kilometres south of there along the river

 I do believe they are female mountain bluebirds, but they were so grey? we did think we saw a flash of blue, but the male in both instances disappeared very fast. In both cases there were two birds when we first spotted them. And the were perching on the poplars along the snow free high bench of the river.

April 20 2013

Townsend's Solitaire
That is what Mary Whitley thinks, and she is an expert on birds. So these are probably Townsend's Solitaires

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch

On the Kusawa road we spotted a flock of 5 of those finches.
April 20 2013
Apparently this is a high mountain bird, the  recent snow must have driven them down.

Bohemian Waxwings

Bohemian Waxwings
Mendenhall subdivision
April 19 2013
a large flock of them was flying around on the hill, landing on the grass and in the poplar trees, making lots of sound, they call it in a book a buzzy trill.