Photo Study (Updated) Of Rough-legged Hawks At Oberly Road WMA

The Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus) is a hawk of the North. The species, named for its feathered legs, breeds in arctic and sub-arctic tundra and taiga regions of North America, Europe and Asia. Both dark and light forms are common, with many birds intermediate between the extremes. In autumn, almost all Rough-legged Hawks leave the breeding grounds and migrate to southern Canada and northern United States. Every few years, however, when there is a lot of snow cover up north, the Rough-legged Hawk comes even further south looking for food and we get to see it in our area.

In North America, several distinctive plumages are reported. Both light and dark morphed Rough-legged Hawks occur in North America, but dark morphs are found nowhere else. Dark morphs are more common in the East where they make up between 25% and 40% of the population, whereas in the West they make up only 10% if the population.

I have been visiting the Oberly Road WMA in Alpha, New Jersey for the past couple of weekends looking for Snow Buntings, Snow Geese, Horned Larks, Lapland Longspurs and Northern Harriers. I found them all but also saw five different Rough-legged Hawks around the fields. There were at least three light morphs and two dark. I finally got lucky today when several of these beautiful birds came within range of my camera lens.

I was able to visit the Oberly Road WMA again this afternoon on my way home from New Jersey. The photos with the red captions were taken February 1st and the photos with green captions taken today. I was able to get a few really nice shots of the RLHA's in the air as well as on the ground.

This large hawk is about 21 inches long and has a wingspan of close to 4 1/2 feet. It can often be seen hovering when hunting over open grassland in search of small mammals and sometimes other birds.

Please click on either the thumbnails or the captions to see a larger image...thanks!

  Revised February 4th, 2009                                                                         Please click here to go back to Bird Webpage Index

© Howard B. Eskin 2009                    Please click here to email suggestions or comments to hbeskin@voicenet.com