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At Thoreau's Nine-Acre-Corner, Concord/Sudbury MA on 12/18/02, I found this Redtail [while trying to relocate the next bird!]. It is dark-headed and dark-backed, but has a seemingly "normal" belly band. By that I mean it starts pretty far down the breast, compared the other images on these pages. The belly band does widen on the sides though.
The tail looks long, but this an adult. |
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On New Year's Day 2003, I relocated the Redtail whose images I used to start off these Wintertail pages. It was perched at Nine Acre Corner maybe 20 yards from where I photographed it a couple of weeks ago.
It is prototypical of the bird proposed back in 1950: a Redtail of the Canadian spruce-fir belt. It has pretty much gone unaccepted as a variety/subspecies here in the east. Our Redtail is quite variable. Richly variable. Especially if you pay attention during the Winter! There is still an ongoing quest to gain more knowledge and define a subspecies from somewhere toward the northern edge of its range. |
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New Year's Day '03 at Nine Acre Corner, Concord/Sudbury MA -- this Redtail has the narrow in the center, wider at the sides belly band of a Western Red-tailed Hawk, but is also common among Eastern Red-tailed Hawks in Winter.
While the throat is not dark, it is demarcated by a dark line with reddish-brown markings raining down onto the upper breast. The lack of any reddish wash in the area between the neck and belly band makes this a probable female. The necklace of streaks will be seen in both sexes. All the birds on this page are adult Redtails, but check out the tail/wing tip length on them. As an identification and/or aging feature it appears pretty much useless... without considerable qualification. |
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On New Year's Eve in Nova Scotia, a year ago, this was a common sight --adult Redtails with dark heads, darker malar marks, but very faint, elegant belly bands.
However, this is an uncommon sight on my Winter surveys... maybe one out of hundred. In the Winter of '01-02, these birds were in Vermont and New York in good numbers probably due to low vole numbers on their home grounds [wherever that might be!?]. Nova Scotia is now known to be one of those places. This bird is know as a white dwarf on my Winter Raptor Counts and when rarely seen in migration. Another intriguing moniker for a Canadian Redtail that is specifically large and overall reddish-brown: chocolate giant. It is a unreliable behavioral field mark that the Roughleg will sit on the twigs of small trees or shrubs. The northernmost Redtails here in the east will do it too. This bird was perched in a whisp of a tree that was maybe 12 feet tall. |