Unusual Hawk at Ridgewood Reservoir

I've always been fascinated by nature and the environment, but it wasn't until I moved to Brooklyn that I became interested in birds. A Red-tailed Hawk that I observed in Prospect Park was the beast that started me down that challenging road called "birding".

Shortly after I became aware of urban Red-tailed Hawks, I started to notice other birds of prey in my local park. Identifying them seemed like an exercise in futility as they would disappear over the hills or into the woods moments after I got them in my bins. Naively, I remember thinking, "If I could only find one perched in a tree, it would be really easy to determine the species". Fourteen years (and many misidentified raptors) later, I've learned that, in most cases, a hawk in flight is actually much easier to identify than one that is perched in a tree. Yesterday I had an experience that was a clear reminder of that lesson.

I had spent several hours wrestling with a frustrating computer problem and decided I needed to clear my head. Cycling sometimes helps to give me a fresh perspective, so I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the Ridgewood Reservoir. When I got to Highland Park I rode around the bike path that surrounds the three basins. During my last lap, a hawk flew out of a small patch of woods adjacent to Highland Boulevard. It headed straight towards me, only a few feet above the pathway, then over the fence and into the forested 3rd basin. I had assumed by the general shape and brown streaks, that it was a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. I glanced over my left shoulder and saw that it perched fairly close and it wasn't a red-tail. Rather than a belt of vertical streaks across the belly, this bird was streaked from the chin to the belly. The raptor stayed on his perch when I walked back to get a better look.

The reservoir basins are approximated 40 feet below the level of the bike path. A forest growing up from the floor gives one an unusual perspective for viewing birds in the trees; almost like a canopy walkway. So, when I stuck my bins into the openings in the cyclone fence to look at the hawk, we were actually eye-to-eye. He had an usually long tail, but I was fairly certain he wasn't an accipiter. He faced me so I couldn't see the pattern on his back or wings. I started to run down in my head all the likely brown, streaky raptors; goshawk, sharp-shinned, cooper's, harrier, red-shouldered, broad-winged. I had all the time in the world to examine this hawk, but still couldn't be 100% certain of its identity. I even had enough time to shoot a short video through my binoculars. After what seemed like an eternity in birding terms, the hawk spun around and took off, down into the interior of the wet forest. For a brief second, I had the rare viewpoint of looking down on the bird's back and upper wings. He had pale panels near the ends of his wings.

The habitat, alone, should have given me a hint to the bird's ID, but had he not flown, I might still be scratching my head. What do you think it is?