We live in Windsor, but only today ventured over to look for the hawk. We
traipsed around in the SWA area and compared notes with a few people in that
area. Luckily, I had worn snow boots. With no luck there, we headed south on
257 and ended up in a parking lot of a business on the East side of the road
(Hydrotex, I think). We were about to leave and I scanned the far trees with
binoculars when I noticed a hawk in my field of vision. The time was close to
Noon. It was perched on a piece of red machinery at the business and not very
far from the car. We went over the description Eric Defonso had provided which
we had with us, checked the Sibley's and our printout of Eric's picture of the
bird. We then backed down slowly along a fence to get a view of the front of
the bird. At that point the bird flushed--no red in the tail. It landed on a
green fence type apparatus in the middle of a big field adjacent to where it
had been. We thought
it would stay there and went back to the SWA to tell the people we had met.
They followed us back but the bird was then gone. We scanned for about 15
minutes but did not refind it. Joe Roller then received a call saying the bird
was back near SWA and the group pursued their quest. Ray and I went to Fort
Collins to check for Wood Ducks at Sharp Pointe Pond--none.
We were very fortunate to get great looks at the Hawk and we were lucky we
stayed in the car as it was so close we would have flushed it immediately had
we opened a car door. As Eric had said it was sitting straight up and appeared
smaller and slimmer than a Red-Tailed would. When it landed on the green fence
thing there was a Red-Tail on a nearby telephone pole that we were able to
compare it with.
We hope the others had success. It was fun being out with others on a similar
quest and sharing information.
Joan Glabach
Windsor, CO
