So no flowers for me? That is quite alright as I have my hands full trying to get my Jades to flower... not sure if I could take on another "project" :) Good idea, Costarico, I have been looking into that after seeing pics of much fuller ones. The single stem look of mine is nice, however, I do admire the bushier ones. I would propagate the top part if pruned but I'm not sure if now is the best time to be doing so? When you say "cut down" about how far do you mean as I wouldn't want to cut down more than half. Thanks to you both.

That's a good possibility, but when I saw it (from a distance), it really looked like the bars on the wings were almost to the tip of the wings..........sort of like what the white bars on a red-headed woodpecker look like when it flies. Maybe I have some sort of a mutant?? I'll be keeping my eye out for it again.

I suggest visiting Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "All about Birds" webpage. You can listen to the calls of hawks (since you got to hear this suspicious bird's call). That might be the key to IDing this bird. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/id The most educated answer I can give is that this is a dark morph red-tailed hawk. Its bill is just too broad to be a red-shouldered hawk (and I have not known red-shouldered hawks plumage to vary that considerably, as red-tailed hawks are known to do). Now the fact that you're in Florida is interesting since dark-morph red-tailed hawks are more known to occur in the Plains and western U.S.(see Harlan's hawks and western red-tailed hawks for images). So, unless this is a falconry bird that escaped, this is probably a rare bird to find in Florida. Would love to hear the opinion of a birding expert. This post was edited by TMFF on Mon, Jan 28, 13 at 22:31

I tried to build something so he can climb out