>I'd been wanting to get a copy of Wheeler & Clark's new _A Photographic
>Guide to North American Raptors_, and the McNary NWR buteo finally pushed
>me over the edge. I brought it back to my office and compared photos with
>those on Scott's rarebird web site. This leaves me with no doubt that the
>bird is an immature Red-tail.

I finally got a chance to see the photos. Nice photos of an immy
red-tailed. What exactly is confusing folks? The tail looks
like an immy-redtailed, the pale chest (dark-light-dark!) looks
like a red-tail's, the shape looks like a red-tailed. It's got
some dark-morph blood in it, and we'd probably call this a rufous
morph immy if we were banding it. These are in essence intermediate
between black and typical light-morph birds, and have a lot more
blotchy feathers in the belly area. At times the chest is heavily
marked, too, much more so than this one, but there's always a bit
of contrast with the chest being a bit lighter than the belly. Except,
of course, in true black-morph birds such as the New Mexico critter
I've got scanned up on my web site.

Rufous-morph birds often don't show the patagial mark, interestingly.
The entire underwing coverts are splotched. This isn't simply
a matter of optical illusion with the patagial mark being made
more difficult to pick out in the midst of all this underwing
splotchiness - I've seen a couple in the hand which don't have
a solid patagial mark. I find this interesting and wonder if the
eveness of pattern is a trait imparted by the trace of black-morph
heritage these birds seem to have - black-morph birds have
solid-black underwing coverts.

>Then look at the immature rufous-morph Red-tail on p. 99.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!!! We have a winner, folks!

I have some in-the-hand immy rufous morph shots, too, but haven't
scanned any of them unfortunately. You'll just have to take my
word for it, we see birds like this fairly frequently in the
Goshutes. 10% perhaps, with maybe 1% each of black, Krider's
and Harlans. I say that because we seem to band about one of each
of the latter hawks every year or two and band about 75 redtails
a year there.

>Especially compare the tails, also the shape of the birds.

I do have an adult red-shouldered scanned in:

http://www.xxxpdx.com/photo_cd/a/m99.html

Among other things, notice the semi-accipitery look of the
relatively long, slender legs and its relatively dainty
build. Redtails are "chunky" and the shape is distinctive.


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