[Birdtalk] Red-tail?

[Mark Stackhouse]

Hola Doug,

That's an interesting bird, but I don't think it's a Harlan's, at least 
not a pure Harlan's. The subspecies of Red-tails can be very confusing, 
especially here in the west, and no field guide can adequately 
illustrate all the variations. Our local subspecies, calurus, is the 
most variable of al the subspecies, and probably forms intergrades with 
many (all?) of the adjacent subspecies, including presumably harlani.

Some of the things that don't look "pure" harlani to me is the large 
amount of rufous in the breast, and the rather broad, darkish 
sub-terminal band in the tail, features that are generally considered 
signs of an intergrade. But it may fall within the range of variation 
of our local subspecies, since just about any color combination is 
possible in calurus.

This is a good example of the hazards of trying to force what you see 
in the wild to fit the illustrations in the field guides - none of the 
fields guides can show all the possible variations, especially in a 
species such as Red-tailed Hawk.

Nice photos, and good job with posting this  observation!

Mark Stackhouse
mark at westwings.com
801-487-9453 (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)
011-52-323-285-1243 (San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico)

On Jan 29, 2008, at 8:02 PM, Doug Roberts wrote:

> Hi Birder buddies,
> Could you please go to
>
>   http://picasaweb.google.com/OlDugDawg/RedTailedHawkHarlanS
>
> and tell me if this is truly a Red-tailed Hawk, Harlan's population? 
> That's the closest match I could find for this bird in the Sibley 
> guide.  I saw the bird in Bountiful on 29 Jan 2007, about 10am.
>
> Thanks,
> Doug Roberts
>
>
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