Jim Lady:
>My only
>discomfort/embarrassment was a feeling that the whole discussion was
>started by my inability to correctly identify a common raptor.

Perhaps the following anecdote will make you feel a bit better...

One year, while teaching my annual Elderhostel class in the Malheur
area, we came across a dark-morph buteo hanging out on a power pole.

The area was full of young hawks, and we were scoping them one at
a time. This one was perhaps 100 ft away, not far at all for
a scope! It was perched in such a way that the tail wasn't
visible, and you couldn't see if the primaries extended beyond
the end of the tail (as they do in Swainson's hawks).

Anyway, after much discussion with my co-leader, we finally decided
it was a dark-morph Swainson's, though we couldn't see breast nor
chest either. I forget what madness led us to this decision,
probably partly a lack of the white "V" shape the scapulars make
down the back of (most) RTs.

Oh, it was raining, too (excuses, excuses!)

Anyway, shortly after making the pronouncement and explaining that
I wasn't sure, but "this is why", the bird pooped and flew off,
exposing a brick-red tail!!!

OOPS!

We have participants fill out evaluations each year, and one
said "Don really knows his birds, EXCEPT RAPTORS! He needs to
learn how to ID them!". I don't know if it was because we
were wrong, or because it took us fifteen minutes to reach
a wrong decision!

Talk about total embarrassment for a semi-professional raptor
trapper, bander, and observer!

Buteos can be VERY difficult to ID, so don't feel bad at all.

Nearly as embarrasing as the time I ran a fifteen-passenger
van out of gas on a paying tour, sixty miles from the nearest
gas station in Fields, OR - out next to the Alvord desert in
midday heat!

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>