Go Retire Psychiatrist

We saw some kind of raptor today in our back yard and I couldn’t tell for sure if it was a Red-tail hawk or not. I got the video with an old Canon point-and-shoot through a window at 7:45 in the morning and she sky was overcast. It had a dark spot below its eye, mostly white breast feathers. The back feathers looked mostly brownish. It didn’t look like it had been banded.

It looked like its left foot might have been injured. It looked almost black. It held its left leg up most of the time while perched in a tree, but lowered it so it could scratch its face with the right foot. It’s blurry but you can see its left foot starting at the about 44:15 mark in the video.

I checked a couple of websites with photos of common Iowa raptors, but this bird doesn’t seem to closely resemble any of them.