Spent the day around Front Royal and Winchester today. Nice to see good numbers of hawks while driving out and back on 66- Red-tailed & Red-shouldered, and our smallest member of the falcon family, Kestrels. They like the edges of the interstates because it's a good habitat for mice, voles, and grasshoppers (the Kestrels go after the hoppers in summer). Quite a few Red-shouldered Hawks here and there on the wires, seemingly outnumbering the Red-tailed Hawks . The easy way to tell the difference is the breast color- if it's whitish, sometimes with a darker band on the chest, it's a Red-tail. If the breast color is reddish it's usually a Red-shouldered (the pictured one is a Red-tailed- note the belly band). At one point looked to my left and saw two Red-tails sitting on some powerlines a few feet apart- a sign that courting has begun in anticipation of Spring. Also saw quite a few Kestrels, our smallest falcon.
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