juvenile red tail hawk or peregrine falcon?

[largely lifted from DSR]

DSR caught a glimpse of something odd in the back yard, turned, looked more closely, and his brain clicked through: that's a very large bird -- that's a raptor -- that's a peregrine falcon in about a second. He grew up fairly close to the peregrine breeding program at Cornell University, and once his parents hosted a bird in their crabapple tree for a quarter hour or so.

The usual predator birds around here are red-tailed hawks, which are brown with red tails -- this one had a distinctly charcoal grey-black head and a striped belly. It was quite large, and thus probably a female.

The bird had caught and killed something, which I think was one of our yard bunnies. The prey was large enough that the bird had to grab it in one foot and start hopping along the yard in order to get enough thrust to take off.

There are peregrine falcons in Boston itself among the high buildings -- apparently they think skyscrapers make an adequate substitute for cliffs, and pigeons are tasty and plentiful.

Unfortunately, the good camera was unavailable, so DSR had to use his Droid. The Droid thought the window screen was more important than the bird, so sorry about the blurry shot.

Edit: may well have been a juvenile red tail - the markings look similar to the peregrine.

juvenile red tail hawk or peregrine falcon?

[largely lifted from DSR]

DSR caught a glimpse of something odd in the back yard, turned, looked more closely, and his brain clicked through: that's a very large bird -- that's a raptor -- that's a peregrine falcon in about a second. He grew up fairly close to the peregrine breeding program at Cornell University, and once his parents hosted a bird in their crabapple tree for a quarter hour or so.

The usual predator birds around here are red-tailed hawks, which are brown with red tails -- this one had a distinctly charcoal grey-black head and a striped belly. It was quite large, and thus probably a female.

The bird had caught and killed something, which I think was one of our yard bunnies. The prey was large enough that the bird had to grab it in one foot and start hopping along the yard in order to get enough thrust to take off.

There are peregrine falcons in Boston itself among the high buildings -- apparently they think skyscrapers make an adequate substitute for cliffs, and pigeons are tasty and plentiful.

Unfortunately, the good camera was unavailable, so DSR had to use his Droid. The Droid thought the window screen was more important than the bird, so sorry about the blurry shot.

Edit: may well have been a juvenile red tail - the markings look similar to the peregrine.