Need to get better at silhouettes of big soaring birds
@Betty yes? you called? :D
@soph_sol if a bird is 2-3 hundred feet above me and not flapping, how do I know its right name?!?
@Betty WELL. the fact that it's not flapping is actually one of the useful pieces of information! different families tend to have different soaring styles, which helps a lot. then you also want to look at the size and shape of the wings, and how distinct the "fingers" (primary flight feathers) are at the tips of the wings, the length and shape of the tail, how bent the wings are at the wrist, the angle upwards that the wings are held at, and how prominent the head is. You can find charts online comparing the common north american raptors!
I like this one for raptors of the northeast http://www.battaly.com/nehw/carrier_guide/carrier_guide_2008.pdf , and a lot of raptors will be similar where you are, but this for the most common species of north america will have some useful info for birds that are different elsewhere on the continent https://www.hawkmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HMANA-Hawk-Guide.pdf
@soph_sol I wonder if it was a bald eagle? Because what I really noticed was that its wings kind of looked like one long rectangle.
@soph_sol it looked bigger, tbh, but really who knows how near or distant it was? Not I.
@Satsuma @Betty yeah between wing shape and sense of hugeness, bald eagle does seem like a good possibility!