College Creek Hawkwatch today recorded its first "dark" Red-tailed Hawk.
Bill Williams, Geoff Giles, Andy Hawkins and I were there. As Jerry Liguori
points out in "Hawks From Every Angle," true dark morph Red-taileds are
uncommon, while there is a variety of intermediate, darkish birds from the
western U.S. and telling them apart at distance is difficult...so he often
categorizes them both with the term "dark."
Luckily, our bird circled after crossing the river and we watched through
binoculars and scopes for at least 5 minutes, as it also interacted with 2
other "eastern" Red-taileds behind us in good light, providing a nice
comparison. The bird had a number of interesting characteristics:
the uppersides were not only brownish but appeared to have grayish tones as
well, as pointed out first by Bill and there was little, if any mottling,
as is generally seen with "easterns," making for a very uniform image;
"easterns" also often show distinct paler inner primaries at this season at
the hawkwatch, which this bird did not display.
the undersides appeared uniform darkish, except for lighter flight feathers
and tail
there appeared to be no light uppertail coverts and because of that and the
uniform, dark upperside, the deep red-orange tail of this adult bird
really stood out in contrast
Earlier this month, Ned Brinkley posted about a likely "northern"
Red-tailed, seen on Fisherman Island, presumably from northern and eastern
Canada,
which showed a very dark belly and "peach" breast, among other
characteristics. We saw no contrast in our bird between breast and belly.
Brian Taber
Coastal VA Wildlife Observatory
