Hi all, Sorry for the late notice, but I wanted to be sure about this before posting it. Gary Lefko sent me a secondhand report from Dave Elens this morning about a possible juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk at the Kodak SWA near Windsor, with a photo attached. The photo was intriguing, so after a dentist appt I went over there to check it out, just as the cold front was passing through.
>From the parking area I walked about a quarter mile east on the trail, and after a few false alarms that included 2 Bald Eagles (adult and 1st year) and 2 Red-tails (also an adult and a juvenile), I found the bird in question. It was perched in a cottonwood about 10 minutes walk from the parking area right next to the river and looking in the direction of the water away from the trail, so my initial view was from the back. In the scope it was easy to see that this was a juvenile of some sort, as it had a plain brown, only lightly-banded tail. The back was brown with mottling of white splotches on the scapular and back feathers. The mottles didn't really take the form of a strict 'V' per se, but were 'V'ish, if that makes sense. While perched, the primaries extended perhaps only half the length of the tail. The head was pretty dark, but with a few reddish or golden highlights. When the bird turned its head, I saw a fairly bright yellow cere, and the irises were brown, not yellow. After 10 minutes of watching I moved around to the front, and examined the bird from 30-40 yards. It was from here that I took some photos with my SLR. These photos are now posted to my web page, and are at the 'front' of my photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferruginous/ I tried to digiscope, but my ancient digiscope camera batteries died on me in the bitter cold. As you can see, the bird has a fairly clean belly with no band, but rather a concentrating of brown-streaked feathering up more toward the throat. The head shows a fairly prominent white supercilium and palish auriculars. The throat is dark, but with light lines on either side of it. After another 10 minutes or so, I moved a bit closer, partly because I wanted to flush the bird (despite my usual reservations about doing such things) since I was getting numb in my hands and feet (temps were getting down to about 12, with a steady N wind) and I just wanted to get more data then go back to the car and warm up. The bird flew off the perch and along the opposite riverbank past me, offering me decent views in the binos before shuffling off low into the branches a ways further east of me. In flight, I was able to easily discern **upperwing buffy crescents at the bases of the outer primaries**. There were about 6-8 bands visible on the undertail too. Now, I tried to get a view of any underwing patterns to look for Red-tailed Hawk patagial marks to either rule that species in or out, but my looks were not satisfactory. And unfortunately, in my increasing numbness of digits (and probably brain) I did not get any flight photos. Still, I believe all the other evidence, photographed and observed, strongly points to this bird being a Red-shouldered Hawk. Other suggestive behavioral traits: the bird was perched in a very upright posture, typical of most all Red-shouldered Hawks I've seen. Also, after it flushed it flew no more than 20-30 feet high at any time to yet another portion of woods very close to the water, as opposed to perching in taller trees overlooking the open fields. The Red-taileds I'd seen earlier had no compunction about flying higher or elsewhere, despite the worsening weather. Lastly, as I headed back to the truck the bird actually returned to nearly the same spot I found it in, meaning it may be reasonably fond of this particular stretch of river. I'll be heading back out there first thing tomorrow to get another look, and hopefully clearer photographs. Good luck to everyone who wants to find this bird. -- Eric DeFonso Fort Collins, CO
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