Update January 09, 2008: Added a nice flying rufous morph from San Antonio at the bottom of the page .
Update March 11, 2003: All
the Harlan's Hawks are now
on their own page - click here. Also
added new images of the same Krider's below, plus another paler-headed
Krider's and a Rufous (?) adult.
All these Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo
jamaicensis) were photographed in Tarrant County,
Texas:-
1) November 22, 2002 on Winscott-Plover Road: a juvenile Krider's Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis krideri/borealis):
Here's the same Krider's on
March 11, 2003; Bill Clark and I banded this bird in mid- January.
Every sighting of it has been within the same 100 yard stretch
of Winscott -Plover road. Note the rate of absorption of the food
in its crop:- the lower photo was taken about 15 minutes after
the upper shot (this is not just a posture/photo effect - I studied
the bird carefully on both occasions and the crop bulge had shrunk
noticably the 2nd time):
2) Krider's Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis
krideri/borealis) on Bonds Ranch Road, NW Tarrant
County, February 21, 2003; this bird had imm. tail feathers, but
there were two generations of retrix visible in the field, thus
I think it must be a 2nd-winter bird - ?:
3) December 28, 2002 at Village Creek Drying Beds; a juvenile
Eastern Red-tail (Buteo jamaicensis
borealis); - Eastern juvs can have rather wavy
bars in the tail (per Bill Clark); Harlan's have fewer, thicker
dark bars:
4) East Peden Road, NW Tarrant County on February 21, 2003; this
adult is either a rufous morph or intermediate morph Western Red-tail (Buteo jamaicensis calurus) (which?):
5) This adult rufous morph is spending its third winter at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, San Antonio - here from mid-December 2007: