a-tristis's Favourites

Interesting morph Red-Tailed Hawk. Despite outwards appearance, when sent for review to leading North American aw experts Brian Sullivan and Jerry Liguori , they stated it was not a calurus.

Rather they felt it may be a 1st documented dark morph abieticola.

Their comments:
"This is a really great bird. Based on the retained juvenile outer primaries and secondaries, as well as the pale eye, this bird can be safely aged as a second-year. This is really important because of the pattern of these retained outer primaries. We have very few examples of juvenile calurus with banded outer primaries (I mean just a few out of 1000s of birds), yet this is a regular feature of harlani, kriderii, and borealis. I wouldn't say this is the 'smoking gun' we've needed, but it is strongly suggestive that at least this individual, is not calurus.

Dark/rufous morphs are not proven to exist in abieticola--yet. Your bird might be a critical piece in that argument though"

An album showing all pics I obtained may be seen here :
https://www.flickr.com/gp/146000359@N08/f71HW0