(almost) Wordless Wednesday

White-tailed Hawk - Luke Tiller

Just back from an amazing week at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival doing some scouting for a potential future HMANA event (click here to see our website for current events and updates in the near future). Though the news of the week was almost certainly Jeff Bouton of Leica Sport Optics fame discovering the second US record of Amazon Kingfisher (picture and map here), for me the raptor viewing opportunities were the real highlights. It's hard to pick a favorite with such an extensive list of southern specialties down there: Harris's Hawk, White-tailed Hawk, Hook-billed Kite, White-tailed Kite, Zone-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara and Gray Hawk, but you'd be hard pressed not to pick the Aplomado Falcon, even if they might not be technically 'countable' yet.