Thoughts and Stories

Calling all Birders: Red-shouldered or red-tailed? (March 29, 2007)

You never know what you'll find in your backyard.

Some time ago, this hawk started appearing in our yard. We get plenty of small birds and an occasionally a sharp-shinned or a merlin, but until this bird, we never had anything larger than a crow show up (save for one wild turkey which showed up under the feeder one day and ran away when I went to take a picture of it). So I've been taking pictures of it for some time now, just because (or so I thought) it was a cool-looking red-tailed hawk that was fun to watch and photograph.

After posting this picture I was talked into changing the ID to red-shouldered-- I'm still relatively new to birding and had never seen a RS hawk before, and I realized it was missing some major red-tailed features. But it created some dispute with other people insisting that it was still a red-tailed hawk after all. I knew by then that it wasn't a red-tailed, and was sure for a time that it was a RS hawk. Now, however, I'm wondering if it's possible that this is actually a hybrid of some sort.

So... what do the rest of you think? I've got lots of thumbnails of it at (each one pointing to a larger picture) this link and I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can just click on the "add comment" link to give your own opinion.

A note about this: I've grouped these pictures by day because, on any given day, I know it's the same bird from that day. The Sunday, November 25, 2005 trio, for example, are all the exact same bird and while I think the November 13, 2005 bird trio (which are all the same bird) is the same bird as the November 25th bird (the tail pattern is the same, though that's not easy to spot), I could be wrong about this.

UPDATE: I managed to get a recording of this bird, which can be found here. This recording should sufficient to demonstrate once and for all that the bird is, at least partially, a red-shouldered hawk.

UPDATE #2: David Sibley weighs in, supporting my idea that it could be a hybrid:

What an interesting bird! While I had a momentary first impression of "western Red-tail" that was quickly dispelled as I looked at more details and I think this can only be a hybrid Red-tailed x Red-shouldered Hawk!

The pattern of orange breast with sparsely streaked and barred belly seems like a mixture of the two species and not normal for either, the posture and body shape in some photos looks like Red-tailed, in others like Red-shouldered, and several photos show clear reddish accents in the smaller wing coverts which is wrong for Red-tailed. I�m sure a careful analysis would reveal lots more "mixed" characteristics.