Buteo

When I heard the call, I finally looked up at the right time to see what it was. It had never sounded exactly like a seagull (and we do have those around here and sometimes they get away from the water a bit). I could see the bird just as plain as could be soaring upward in a spiral, flapping its wings just a time or two, lazily. It was obviously a hawk, obviously a buteo, and easily identified from the books as a red-tailed hawk. I think it was a male. We've been seeing more and larger armadillos around here, the latest dead in the street. It took two days for a turkey vulture to find it.