Amateur Memory Drawing

I never draw out of my head, just can't do it.  This pitiful bird drawing, which looks a lot like a stuffed penguin with an elongated tail, or maybe a fat dove with a strange red tail, is a drawing that I made from memory of an astonishing giant bird that I saw today while walking in downtown Asheville enroute Whole Foods from the Y.  This bird must have been 18" from head to tail.  It zoomed in like a low-flying plane right overhead and landed heavily on a telephone wire very close to where I was standing with my mouth hanging open.  Two small birds were flying near it, but when it landed they took off.  I dug in my bag for a pen but worst luck-- no paper at all to draw on.  I stood there memorizing the shape of the bird.  It was silhouetted against a bright overcast sky, so it looked dark gray but with white belly.  After a few minutes it took off, and I saw its reddish brown tail.  The tail was blunt and not tapered or swallowtaily.  I saw the bird dive down between a house across the street and a garage, but I couldn't see what was going on.

I looked up giant gray-black raptors with reddish tails in NC on my phone right away, and I think this thing was a red-tailed hawk.  When I got home I painted from memory the painting on the other page (as well as the flying version, which was so surprising with that bright red tail).  Then I copied a red-tailed hawk from the web page, only I adjusted the illustration to reflect what I actually saw.  According to the page the grey-black top part can have white spots and streaks, but I didn't see any.  I hadn't even noticed the yellow feet and beak, but I believe that was what color they were.  At any rate, there was no other raptor on the web page that remotely looked like the bird I saw.  The real identifying feature for me was the red top side of the tail.

The little orangey moons are some that I carved earlier today for an book that I'm working on.