What bird looks like a hawk but not like I've seen before?

by Brenda
(Fredericktown, OH.)

My husband and I were looking across the soy bean field and a we saw a bird we first thought was a sea gull. I got my binoculars out and it looked like a hawk, or maybe a falcon of some sort. The coloring was just like sea gull, mostly white and gray, black tips on its wings, a white band across the base of its tail. It was fighting with something or looking for something on the ground. It was hovering for a minute and land, then take off and hover again.