Red-tailed Hawk Surveying the Area

This Red-tailed Hawk was looking around the area, presumably checking for both potential threats and potential meals. (I'm assuming it wasn't sure whether I was the former, and was more confident that I wasn't the latter.)

This hawk had the size and shape of a Red-tailed Hawk, but didn't obviously display either of my favorite field marks for the species:

  • Maybe you can interpret there to be a little burnt orange color on the tip of tail that's visible in the 1st picture, but it looks more brown in the 2nd picture. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to youth or lighting. While young Red-tailed Hawks do have brownish tails, the better look at the tail looked like it was shaded by the hawk's body, perhaps obscuring some orange coloring.
  • Most of this area's Red-tailed Hawks have a brown-speckled "belly band". When I enlarge the picture I think I see a speckle or 2, but far less than usual for these hawks. My explanation for this is that some subspecies of Red-tailed Hawk found across the continent have far less of a belly band than our local Red-tailed Hawks. I suspect that even if this individual was born around here, it had 1 or both parents who are from another area of the country.
  • I also remember hearing about a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk spotted around Duke Farms. Could this be that hawk? It's hard to say, especially since animals can have a wide range of leucism, making them slightly lighter/whiter all the way to albinoism. (Albinos can be identified as having pink eyes due to a complete absence of melanin, but there's no dead giveaway for leucism.)
  • It's a little hard for me to tell if this is a local leucistic Red-tail or a non-local Red-tail with non-local coloring.
May 9, 2023 at Duke Farms
Photo 282306594, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

May 9, 2023 at Duke Farms
Photo 282306581, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

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