Saturday, August 23, 2008

Banded juvenile Red-tailed Hawk

On a country road today a few miles from McMinnville I found a dead juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. I stopped to take a closer look, and discovered that it was wearing bands on both legs. The metal band indicates that it was banded by someone working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife department.

I took advantage of this chance to get a close-up look at a young Red-tail's plumage; beautiful design of markings and subtle coloration, usually seen only in broad outline from a distance.


4 Comments:

At 6:05 AM, Blogger David Bailey said...

This is one of the birds likely banded at PDX by Carole Hawlett. I will email her your blog address.

David Bailey

 
At 2:07 PM, Blogger heidi said...

What a great find - I was looking for plumage variation in juv Red-tailed Hawks and found your blog. Would you mind if I posted a link to this over at ifoundabandedbird.blogspot.com??

 
At 8:53 PM, Blogger FS said...

Thanks, Heidi. I would not mind at all if you posted a link over there. Whatever might be helpful, and expand the conversation is welcome.

 
At 6:21 AM, Blogger heidi said...

Thanks! I'm also curious as to whether or not reporting the band (if it was reported through USGS) resulted in confirmation of where the bird was originally banded... did you ever hear back about it? If not, it might not be too late to see what USGS has on file for it (besides, if they can pull up albatross records from 40 years ago, I'm sure a few years wouldn't matter much!)

 

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