Gene,

Thanks for taking time to look at the hawk photos.

There is quite a bit of rufous tone on this bird but I could not detect any
'red' in the 'shoulders' from any angle. In the photos, what appears as
brown in the tail banding on the upper surface is actually quite rufous.

As I've told Mike Denny, when the bird flys directly away it gives me a
*slight* impression of a Gyrfalcon with its shallow rapid wing beats. On
several occations I counted wing beats at about 4 per second. RTHA, though,
are not much slower so wing beats are probably not a real good field mark.

Scott

At 09:56 AM 2/2/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Scott,
>
>I had a look at the Red-shouldered Hawk photo, but don't have reference
>books handy. The bird certainly doesn't have the feel of a Red-tail.
>The pale face in the dark head seems very unlike a Red-tail and the
>picture that shows the upper surface of the tail relatively clearly sure
>looks more like a Red-shouldered than anything else that comes to mind.
>The head and bill of the first photo seem quite dainty, also, and the
>tail extends well beyond the folded wingtips. The best back shot seems
>to indicate there's a lot of rufous on the shoulder and tertials, but can
>I trust my monitor's color? It is still puzzling why it didn't appear
>obviously smaller and longer-tailed in flight re. a Red-tail. In my
>experience the gestalts are very different in flight.
>
>Gene Hunn.
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Scott Ray Washington Birder Newsletter
Yakima, WA PO Box 191
email: scray at wolfenet.com Moxee, WA 98908
http://www.wolfenet.com/~scray/
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