Rough-legged Hawk

This is a Rough-legged Hawk in flight showing all of its identification markings. However, it is a light morph so the tail is only dark along the edge instead of having a solid black band along the end of the tail. This is probably a female since there is less mottling on the wings and a solid belly band. Males have a mottled belly band. Both sexes have the black wrist patches. These fairly large buteos spend the summer in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Europe, Russia and Siberia where lemmings are a primary prey item. They migrate to southern Canada, the US, Europe, southern Siberia, northern Kazakhstan and southern Russia in the winter and hunt small mammals. The name comes from the feathering on their legs which makes them hard to spot in these photos. Only a few hawk species have feathers on their their legs that extend to the toes.