Red-tail how-tos

Hawks capture the notice of even those with no interest in watching birds.

My wife, who has only a passing interest in birds, sees the hawks on the fence lines or on the long irrigation arms as she drives along Interstate 90 between Liberty Lake and the Spokane Valley Mall.

Friends who never hear the nuthatches in their backyard trees or see the robins on their front lawns ask me if I've seen the hawk that sits atop the light pole at the eastbound on-ramp of the freeway at Highway 41 in Post Falls.

During winter, hawks are always in these places and people are always noticing.

With birds of prey, the problem is not finding them, but identifying them. Bald eagle adults and young look to be two different species. Golden eagles and young bald eagles look very much the same. The identification riddles reach their peak with the highly variable red-tailed hawk, our most common and visible raptor.

The red-tail offers identification challenges to all birders, no matter what their experience. To the novice, separating a wintering rough-legged hawk from a red-tail requires patience and some good views at relatively close range. For the intermediate birder, readily recognizing an immature red-tail for what it is without trying to make it into some other species is the challenge. For the experienced birder, adult red-tails exhibit so much variation in color that trying to key an individual hawk to subspecies becomes an interesting challenge.

So, for those interested in taking the challenge, no matter what your level of expertise, here are a few pointers to help you better enjoy our wintering red-tailed hawks.

First of all, recognize that your biggest test may come simply in trying to identify an immature (first year or juvenile) red-tail. The hallmark of a red-tailed hawk is, of course, its red tail. That is, however, unless you are looking at an immature, which has a brown, streaked, very nonred tail. With the nondescript nature of an immature, it is easy to see how one might look elsewhere for an identification of this bird.

Adults, on the other hand, are easily identified if you get a decent look at the tail - at least most of the time. (Let me come back to that point, however.) For the most part, adult red-tails have a red tail. They also consistently have a pale chest with little or no streaking, a dark belly band, and a dark underside of the leading edge of the wing (called the ptagium).

These, among other more subtle differences, allow one to distinguish adult red-tails from all other broad-winged hawks (the buteos).

More specifically, in our area it allows one to distinguish the red-tail from our other winter buteo, the rough-legged hawk. This slightly bigger hawk has a large white tail with a wide black band on the end. It also has mostly white underwings with large black "wrist" patches, and a chest pattern more streaked than that of the red- tail.

Then, for those interested in going beyond "simply" identifying the red-tailed hawk, there are the subspecies. A red-tail seen on the East Coast is generally paler than the Western forms. But in the West, we see the greatest variation.

Here in the Inland Northwest, we commonly see light-form birds with pale chests and obviously streaked belly bands.

We also have examples of the darker rufous or intermediate-form birds in our area. These birds are darker overall and often have a chest almost as red as their tail and a solidly dark belly band. These are beautiful birds and well worth the extra trouble of looking for them.

Then there are dark-form birds that are a uniform dark brown, including their chest and belly, with only the deep red of the tail giving away its identity (the rough-legged hawk similarly has a dark- form that is uniformly black, including a black-striped tail).

These are the three forms one can expect throughout the Inland Northwest. In addition, there are two prizes one should be on the watch for - both subspecies with more restricted ranges that occasionally winter in our area.

Last October, I was driving through the upper Midwest and saw lots of Krider's red-tailed hawks. These are very pale hawks with a white tail with only a small band of pale rufous at the end. I have seen only one in the Northwest, but a few are reported each winter.

The other relatively rare form in our area is Harlan's red-tailed hawk. This is an Alaskan subspecies that usually winters in the lower Midwest. It is all black at a distance, but shows a great deal of white streaking up close, especially on the chest, and has silvery underwings. This is that adult red-tail without a red tail that I referred to earlier. Harlan's hawks have a tail that varies from off- white, to dirty white, to dark gray, but is not red and is rarely streaked.

So, there you have it. With relatively good winter weather for driving the open areas of the Rathdrum Prairie or along Highway 95 from Sandpoint to Lewiston in north Idaho, or along Highway 2 west or Highway 195 south out of Spokane, there are plenty of opportunities to test your hawk identification skills, at whatever level of birding you find yourself.

And for those who are really enthused, I'll let you in on a special North Idaho secret. There has been a Harlan's red-tailed hawk wintering on the Rathdrum Prairie for the past three years. If you have an afternoon to spend driving Lancaster, Hayden, and Prairie avenues from Highway 95 to the western edge of the prairie, including a few of the smaller gravel roads between, you'll see an example of many of the hawks I've described, including the biggest prize of all, the Harlan's.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

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Birding questions

Birding in Kootenai County is a monthly feature of Handle Extra. Are there birds at your backyard feeder that you can't identify? Do you have questions about a bird that you saw on a walk around your neighborhood or during a drive around the community? Stephen L. Lindsay is an avid birder and encourages readers to send him their birding questions via e-mail. When possible, he will respond to questions in future columns. His e-mail address is: [email protected].

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