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The northern harrier is a slender hawk with very long wings, and during spring and fall hawk migration it is a somewhat uncommon visitor to State College, Pennsylvania. The harrier has a lovely Latin name: Circus cyaneus.
The problem, or my problem, with the northern harrier is that it is easy to mistake for another hawk, especially with a silhouetted view.
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In the following photo, the harrier (on the left) with somewhat shortened wings and a fanned tail looks the very image of a Cooper's hawk. However, the very obliging red-tailed hawk (on the right) is approximately the same size (and how lucky I was to have the two hawks side by side!). Therefore, the left-hand hawk couldn't be a Cooper's hawk.
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The third view of the same hawk - the northern harrier - shows a little more color and pattern. From that point, it was more straightforward to identify it as a northern harrier, either a female or an immature.
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A "classic" identifier of the northern harrier is its white rump. A few other hawks also have a white rump, so without something else to go by (long wings or reddish body), identification is not straightforward.
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The reddish body is an identifier of either female or immature harriers. The male northern harrier is a silver gray hawk and bright white below. Last year I photographed my first (and thus far only) male northern harrier. The photo below is a composite of two images of the same bird.
The wingtips look as if they were dipped in black ink.
Photo note: I used a Pentax *ist D, with the SMC 1000mm reflex lens (handheld), for these photos.
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