Mystery Bird: Ferruginous Hawk, Buteo regalis

Beautiful shot. There appears to be some foreshortening, not only in the wing, but in the body -- he seems just a touch chunkier than he should. Some things to look at -- the shape of the wings, the tail and underwing patterns, and the face.

No kidding, psweet, beautiful shot.

Furyher to Paul's pointers, there is also the glimpse of the upperwing pattern and the colour of the underpart spotting to consider.

Based on the overall chunkiness and the length of the tail, I'd say we definitely have a buteo here. White spot on the primaries of the upperwing, with sparsely marked underwings displaying a dark "comma" at the wrists. The feathers on the legs are sparsely marked (mostly white), as is the breast and belly. The gape reaches beyond the mid-line of the eye.

I'd say it's a juvenile light morph of a very "kingly" species.

Flying? Kingly species? Must be a Monarch, Danaus plexippus.

Wow, for me, this one's hard. The tail looks short somehow, maybe all spread out?

I fumbled my way around the Cornell site, and looked at Goshawks and Gyrfalcons, but they don't fit with the Buteo hints.

The hint hints at a Ferruginous, but the pictures I'm finding show mostly darker leg feathers than this picture, even on the light morph. And I can't tell from the picture whether the feathers go all the way down the legs, as they should on a Ferruginous.

Color me confused. :/

Bardiac, the size of the gape (the line of the closed beak) is a great field mark for this bird. Note how it extends back to the eye. This bird has a large-gaping beak which enables it to eat large prey. Compare the size of the gape on this bird to those of other buteos. The first commenter pointed to this feature. It is indeed a light bird.

Oh, cool! I didn't even see that. Thanks, Sarah! I'll have to look again shortly.

Actually, Bardiac, this is also a great example of why it's important to consider the entire life cycle of a species.

To add to Paul's comment above, particularly with Raptors and Gulls which take several years to gain adult plumage.

I'm a bit "rusty" at this but I dare say you'd see three points of light if the bird tilted a bit towards us.

Can anyone just say what they think the name of the bird is? I'm a beginner and would appreciate it!

Hello "Annoyed", I'm sorry if our ramblings here have upset you again. However as Grrl explained last time you came on we are tryng to explain how to arrive at an identification rather than blurting out the answer. With this in mind could I ask some basic questions of you? How long have you been birding? Do you own any guide books? Any optics? How often do you get into the field? Do you bird alone or in a group? I could ask more but I'll leave it at that for now. I hope you will reply so that we can continue to try and explain how to identify birds to beginners and "experts" alike, as we are all learning from these excellent posts by Grrl and Mr Grrl.

I went out and got myself a Sibley's yesterday. Actually three. (A big one for the house and an eastern field guide (car and such), and a birding basics.)

So, looking at Sibleys, and with all the hints, I'm going to say probably an immature light morph Ferruginous Hawk?

Pointing out the gape really helped me, and I wouldn't have seen that easily without help.

Field marks: beak, face and serious talons point to a raptor; wing shape is broad for a raptor out toward the tips, pointing towards a buteo (thought accipiter wings also look broad to me, so I wouldn't rely on this for myself); the accipiters do seem to have strongish barring across the tail (would that be visible here?); the big gape and overall lightness point to a light morph, and the juvenile is even lighter underneath, with less distinctive patterning on the (under coverts?)

Dear Annoyed, I think the folks who see things better are trying to help me see. Now we'll find out if I'm right!

The Sibley's shows the light morph juvenile from the top, and it looks a bit darker than this, but then I realized that there's a light area on the primaries between the coverts and the tips.

My real question now: how am I ever going to get my grading done with these books to play with!

Finally! That not insignificant snowfall on Saturday caused me to be without power for the last 4 days! And here I am only to find "Annoyed" still annoyed and rather annoyingly so... Adrian has been very patient with you, believing you to be a beginning birder and not a troll, but I remain unconvinced...

education is a risk- you risk showing your inexperince or ignorance or naivete by having a go, getting it right or wrong, being corrected or guided towards a better answer (following almost all the experienced birders here like psweet, Sheri, Adrian, John, etc.) and then trying it again... if you don't have a go you'll always be like Shaq shooting free-throws- always at the level you last were without "risking" getting it wrong to get it better next time... I have yet to see you try an answer- if you have access to this blog you have access to numerous online bird guides, try to key in on the family and take it from there...

as many have suggested above, this bird is from the family Accipitridae, genus Buteo, and this is the largest of the buteos which is often mistaken for an eagle (same family); it's species name refers to it's usual coloring, a "rusty" color... as also suggested by several above, this particular one is one of two morphs, or loosely defined as a color pattern that is not specifically associated with what gender, age, or subspecies it is- this is the "light morph" (where the rusty color is more pronounced) as opposed to a darker brown version called "dark morph"...

the large bill and long gape are characteristic and as you can see above, the feathers cover its legs down to its toes whcih nails this down to only one of two buteo species (the other would be a Rough-legged Hawk, Buteo lagopus)

according to my Sibley, this appears to be a 1st-year light juvenile...?

Hello David, managed to dig yourself out then. Is "annoyed a troll? I thought that trolls were usually more fun than this.
Bardiac, Yes I think you've got it! I must buy a Sibley guide myself as my Nat Geo seems out-of-date now.

Yes, it's a light-morph Ferruginous Hawk. My "I'm a bit "rusty"" comment was meant to be a hint (since iron, Fe, rusts red and the latin for iron - "ferr" - is also the root for this bird's common name).

This photo will explain my "three points of light" comment, which allows this species to be identified from a great distance if it banks enough (or you're high enough) to get a top-side view.

Bardiac -- good call. A couple of comments on your analysis, from someone who spends a quarter of the year watching hawks (alas, not this species -- we're too far east).

Accipiter wings are broad -- but they're also short. With the foreshortening at this angle, that's hard to tell. But there is another structural clue that we can use here -- accipiters have long tails. This one is quite short. Between the tail and the wing, accipiters and buteos end up with distinctively different shapes -- accipiters long-tailed and short-winged, buteos short-tailed and long-winged.

We could see barring on the tail with this shot, if it existed. In fact, the clean white base to the tail rules out not only accipiters, but most of the buteos as well. The big yellow gape is actually a species characteristic -- you'll see it in photos of dark morphs as well. The dark morphs, by the way, are typically dark brown over the entire body. On the other hand, Red-tails, Rough-legs, and Ferruginous are actually rather polymorphic. In other words, we can characterize any individual as dark or light, or sometimes intermediate, but that misses a good deal of variation within each category (especially light morphs).

The pale panel in the outer wing is characteristic of most of the N.Am. buteos, although it's only this obvious in Ferruginous and Rough-legs. And it only remains in adults in Ferruginous. And David -- this is indeed a juvenile. With this species, the white leg feathers are characteristic of 1st year birds. (Which was part of the reason for your initial confusion, Bardiac.) I believe that the sharp, sawtoothed appearance of the secondaries is typical of juvenile buteos, but I can't find a definite answer on that, and the photos for adult Ferruginous aren't as clear as I like. For most raptors this size, older birds should show a few older wing feathers, clearly more worn and therefore a different color than the rest. According to Brian Wheeler, this doesn't appear to be the case in Ferruginous Hawks.

Oh, and David, it does appear to me that you can see feathering just above the toes, but it's also worthwhile to note for others that we're talking here about fine feathers on the tarsi themselves -- the long feathering that appears to cover most of the legs above are actually located on the thigh. On the other hand, on a perched bird, this mark becomes more useful, and in trying to distinguish dark Rough-legged from, say, a Harlan's this could be very useful instead.

A troll, David? Here? Why?

dhogaza,

Thanks for the trinity as a guide (note the lower-case "t"!) and your photo is indeed apt as it also appears to be a light morph juvenile

Actually, ferruginus is a Latin word in of itself, referring to the color of iron rust or something that would "obscure" something bright, derived from ferrum ("iron", or actually any iron-made weapon) and thence ferrugo, "iron rust"

Virgil's Georgics, 1.466 "Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam, cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit" ("Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome, clothed himself.")

arby, he probably couldn't keep pace with Pharyngula so attempted somewhere relatively tame...

Paul, I found the section in Jerry Liguori's "Hawks From Every Angle" a great source. He writes of the juvenile light morphs: "[the] all-white appearance [underneath] alone is a good field mark" and this is then supported by the "dark wrist commas" and brown spotting on the underwing coverts.

David -- yeah, that's a good source. Since we keep our only copy in with the hawkwatch stuff, I'd have to go digging to find it, though. If you've got the money and an interest in hawks, Wheeler's Raptors books are wonderful -- easily the most detailed info out there in an easily accessible format.

By the way, everyone, sorry for the book I wrote. With the little comments window, I didn't realize it was that long.

Thanks Paul,

I think I shared with you how I got to fly some raptors- Common Kestrel, Common Buzzard, Barn Owl, and Merlin when I was at school in Scotland...

there are a few raptors I get straight away (in the field) but there are so many I see for just a moment or are so far away that I don't yet have the go-to 1-2-3 to key them down before they fly away leaving me with more than just "hawk"...!

It's pretty much just "hawk" to me too, with the exception of the red-shouldered pair who nest near me. Others have to really get in my face before I start noting field marks, so I can forget to look them up when I get back to the house. rb

Actually, for learning flying hawks, the best guide out there is still Hawks in Flight, by Dunn, Sutton, and Sibley. It actually focuses on an entirely different set of features, mostly related to shape and flight style. It was written by and for eastern hawkwatchers, but the basics are useful out west even so.

actually, I have many field guides, but one of the ways I like to learn is to look at what you folks think, then work on that. Otherwise, it's too overwhelming.

"one of the ways I like to learn is to look at what you folks think"

Then I believe you need to exercise a little more patience- use the clues provided, combined with your guides, to come up with an 'educated' guess and then if someone hasn't directly come out and named the species (with confirmation from those more experienced whom you will probably have adjudged by now), confirm your own answer with Grrl's answer 48 hours later...