BIRDING TO THE EDG

I was out birding this weekend with Bill Schmoker (nationally renowned photographer) and his father Jim Schmoker. We visited a local site for me, Cherry Creek State Park. The waters were fairly unexciting with only scattered Hooded & Common Mergansers, Redhead, and Common Goldeneye. Nevertheless, throughout the course of the morning we spotted numerous Red-tailed Hawks flying around. We had two Harlan's Hawks, one "Eastern" Red-tail, and one "Western" Red-Tail. Discussions those birds will come at a later date. You can write never-ending novels about this species.

Red-tailed Hawks are so variable that essentially, you always see something different with every bird. I found the one photographed here to be a real cool bird. Rufous morph Red-tailed Hawks come in varying amounts of red, but this one may be the closest to typical that one might see in the field. Brian Wheeler would call the bird in question an, "Adult (Western) intermediate rufous morph." I would have NOT gotten that right in the field, for sure.

The bird above shows a typical Red-tailed, bulky shape. The real interesting thing here is the large rufous band that is painted across the breast of the bird. A pretty clean tail would indicate an adult bird. Young birds would have a tail full of smaller bands more often than not.


This angle above we notice the heavily "red" colored tail that clearly indicates the species in question. Notice the broad sub-terminal band! Young birds would show the smaller bands without the large sub-terminal band as mentioned above. We can also see the cream-colored markings on the scapulars (shoulder blades)! All Red-tailed Hawks sport this attribute and can be one of the better field marks to use when driving down the highway and getting a glimpse of a Buteo species from the back!



One more look at this cool bird! I want to thank Nikon Sport Optics for giving me the opportunity to see these gorgeous creatures in a new light! My Nikon EDG binoculars give me that crisp edge to edge clarity a birder needs in the field.

This Red-tailed Hawk was photographed by Mike Freiberg at Cherry Creek State Park, CO with a Nikon D200 and a 300mm F4 Nikkor lens.