Tropical Audubon Society

South Florida’s Voice of Conservation

This hawk was sighted on 3/21/2018 just south of Lake Park in Tampa, Florida at around 3:30 pm. Using my copy of Sibley's Guide to Birds, I identified it as a short-tailed hawk. But the book also said that there were fewer than 300 nesting pairs in Florida, so I've looked for some other opinions. If this is a short-tailed hawk, then it was quite a treat! The photos aren't as sharp as I would have liked them, as the bird was soaring and circling quite high up. My zoom lens could only go so far, so I enlarged the images for ease of identification.