Yesterday as I was walking on Roosevelt Island, a National Park in the Potomac River, I heard a hawk screaming loudly and realized it was pretty close to where it was.
I walked slowly and quietly toward the source of the sound and spotted this hawk almost directly above me in the trees. There were a lot of branches in the way and I had to search to find a visual tunnel to try to get an unobstructed shot of the hawk. The angle was a steep one and gave me a view of the underside of a hawk that I had never had before. In fact, I think that you can see the roof of his open mouth in the first shot.
The hawk stopped screaming for a little while and I got a shot of him with his mouth closed. It may just be the distortion caused by the steep view angle, but it seems to me that he has an awfully small beak.
I am having a little trouble identifying this hawk. At first I thought it might be a Red-Shouldered Hawk, but now I am not certain, because it doesn’t quite match any of the photos that I see on-line. I’d appreciate any help from more experienced bird watchers in figuring out which species I photographed.
After a too short period on this branch, the bird flew off this perch and disappeared from view. I’ll be keeping my eyes out for hawks and hopefully it will be easier to spot them when the leaves fall off of the trees.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
It looks like a red-shouldered hawk with that red-brown barring on the chest, and the bands on the tail. The call is pretty distinctive too; you could compare with the recording from the cornell bird lab. Here is my photo of that species for comparison: http://bybio.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/in-the-spotlight/
Thanks, Sue. My first instinct was to call it a Red-shouldered Hawk, but this one did not call as long and as piercingly as the ones I have seen previously. I was also concerned that the wings did not seem to be dark enough, though you can’t see much of the wings to say much. Your shot of the Red-Shouldered hawk was stunning–there’s no real comparison. Still, any day that I get a shot of a hawk is a good day.
I consider any day that I get hawk pix a good day … so absolutely you had a good day. You must have got reasonably close to get the underground persecutive. It must have been fun to watch and listen.
If your leaves are falling as fast as ours in no time at all you’ll have a much easier time of bird watching.
We have only had a couple of slight frosts and many of the leaves are still green and hanging on.
I, too, think it’s a red-shouldered, but agree that listening to the Cornell recording is a good idea. Also, red-sh. hawks have a way of looking straight down, when perched; although it’s not pictured that way here, maybe you can recall if the hawk did this?
The angle made it a little tough to tell where he was looking (I couldn’t really see his eyes very well). I have heard red-shouldered hawks in the past and this one sounded a bit different. However, the times in the past were when the hawk was with another one and they may have some slightly different calls.
What a great perspective through your visual tunnel!
Thanks. Crouching and leaning as I did was neither very comfortable nor really stable, but it did help me to get the shots.