Rough-legged Hawks are more petite than Red-tailed Hawks when they're seen flying overhead, but from a side view, it can be trickier. The roughies' wings are a little more slender and tipped at the end, and their tails are longer than a Red-tailed Hawks' tail. Understanding silhouettes within buteos is tricky because we're comparing the profiles of very similar birds, unlike comparing an eagle's profile to a falcon's profile (just an example). Eagles are wide-winged, with thick and deep-looking wings that give deep, pronounced wingbeats. Another characteristic of eagles is a relatively short tail. Falcons are very pointed-winged, with long, squared-off tails and swift wingbeats. Falcons tend to fly very fast, because of their aerodynamics, in addition to the flight style needed to catch their quick-moving prey items.

So going back to Rough-legged Hawks – probably the most distinct field mark on the photographed quiz bird was the tail. The tail is white at the inner base, with a thick black band at the outer edge. The bird in the photo is small-headed with pointed wings (the wing tips appear just below and in front of the tail). A similar bird with the white and black tail is the juvenile Golden Eagle. Golden Eagles are more massive in terms of the girth around the belly and wings. From this side angle, Rough-legged Hawks' front-of-the-wings look as if they are reaching out in front the bird. See the little knobs above the bird's head in the photo? Those little knobs are the `elbows' of the wings. If you see a Rough-legged Hawk fly overhead, you will see a white-and-black-tailed buteo with distinctively large, dark spots on the elbows of the underwing.