Help Identifying this Wisconsin Bird (1 Viewer)

Greetings everyone, and thanks for taking a moment to gander at my little post here.

On the 23rd of December, 2017, I was heading home after purchasing a new vehicle and I had a hawk of some sort swoop in front of me and land on the guard railing beside me as I drove passed, which I caught all on my dash cam at the time. The problem is, the bird flew out in front of some trees (in the winter, it's nothing but brown) which makes it very difficult to ID the creature in flight. By the time he is landed and I get close enough to see any detail, he's sitting at an angle that makes it impossible to see his breast or his tail, which makes IDing him a challenge.

The second image attached is from the very edge of my camera so there is some color distortion, but you get an almost side view of the bird.

Some theories of mine:

1) Juvenile Sharp-Shinned Hawk. The colors of adults are more blueish gray, but the bird seems a little large to be a juvenile. The markings of a juvenile also seem to match up well.

2) Northern Harrier. The only thing that doesn't seem to work according to my research is that their wintering range is a bit south of where I am located (North-East Wisconsin).

3) Juvenile Golden Eagle. Juvenile Golden Eagles do have plenty of white patches in their coloration, though I wasn't able to spy any juvenile Golden Eagles with white around their face like this fellow seems to have.

I'm kind of at a loss here and am by no means a bird expert, but I am capable of doing my own research. Hopefully one of you more seasoned and experienced folks out there can help me out? Thanks

Hi Varwulf: I see this is your initial post - welcome to the forums!

Re: The pictures; not a lot of resolution there ( they're quite small, too - is it possible to upload larger images from a dash cam?). I can't make out the head at all well (appears to be turned away from the line of sight), and much of the tail is hidden behind the guard rail itself. Unfortunately, these are two of the more important features for ID!

I would say that it looks a bit too large and broad across the back for a Sharp-shinned Hawk, although that's just a general impression, and I could be wrong. I don't see anything here that would definitively rule out Red-tailed Hawk, which is the species most often found along roadways around here at this time of year (though I can't speak to what is the case in WI).

Quite certain it isn't a Golden Eagle, though; they're massive birds, much taller and broader than your bird (and I'm pretty sure I can judge that just on scale - steel guard rails being the same size everywhere in N.A.). |;|

Hi Peter C! Thanks for the post!

Sadly the pictures are already as high res as I can get them without a ton of distortion, but you hit all of the points that make it hard to ID that I also noticed. Very unfortunate!

I think your theory on it being a potential red-tailed hawk is not bad at all, we get lots of them in my state and as you said they are common along roadways. I don't know why I didn't initially think of that myself, so thanks for the input

As for Wisconsin vs Canada, we often jokingly refer to Wisconsin as Canada's southern cousin since a lot of our weather and overall demeanors are similar It's a joke more than anything, but I do seem the similarities

Also a good point about NA guard rails being pretty standard throughout the continent, I wasn't sure about the size of a golden eagle juvenile or not but I think your theory is still correct on that, even a juvenile would probably be far too big for this bird.

Thanks for the comment, I do appreciate it