Birds • Page 16

Found this one. It's a Black Phoebe.

 

There's such a huge variety of hawks in CA its hard to narrow down completely. I'd guess either a few of the buteo hawks (Red Tailed, Red Shouldered, Ferruginous, etc.) or a Northern Harrier based on your size description. These are all medium to large sized hawks with broader wings than a cooper's and they tend to have colorful beaks.

 

Yeah hard to say without a more specific idea of your area but the ones mentioned above (Red-tailed/shouldered, Cooper's) are your most common species for Los Angeles. Northern Harrier or Swainson's are possibilities but they're not as common.

Maybe a Peregrine Falcon? That would be cool. Falcons tend be smaller than hawks tho

 

Definitely not a Peregrine, I saw a bunch of those in Germany last year and this was probably 5x the size. I would say this bird was extremely uncommon for the area. It was huge. My office is in Long Beach on an a small channel like a mile from the ocean. I saw it hunting above the channel for about a week. The underside looked darker than the hawks I've been searching. Thought maybe a condor, but when I looked them up the head doesn't seem to match. I only saw it from underneath as it was over the channel though.

 

From all the pictures I've looked at I'm going to say it was a Turkey Vulture.

 

Nice! Vultures are actually pretty damn big. We get a TON of Black and Turkey Vultures in Texas and they always look huge floating way up there