A Ferruginous Hawk And A Red-tailed Hawk With Unusual Plumages

Two raptors that caught my eye recently because of their out of the ordinary plumages.

 

This is a dark morph Ferruginous Hawk in the west desert four days ago. It was soaring quite far away as it hunted and for some reason I never did get sharply focused on it but with its overall dark rufous brown plumage combined with nearly white flight feathers ventrally there’s no question that it’s a dark morph.

 

 

At one point it dove on potential prey from high above. Here I caught it just above the ground near the end if its stuttering plunge. Immediately after I took this shot it abandoned the attempt and flew back to height to hunt some more.

I rarely see dark morphs. By far most Ferruginous Hawks I see are the much more common light morphs. Cornell’s Birds of North America Online says that dark morphs constitute only 0-10% of individuals in various populations studied. Some folks who pay attention to stuff like this have never even seen a dark morph. In almost 12 years of photographing birds I believe I’ve only photographed a dark morph Ferruginous Hawk two or three times so this bird definitely got my attention.

 

 

This is what a fairly typical and much more common light morph Ferruginous Hawk looks like so you can see why the dark morph really stands out.

 

 

The day before I photographed the dark morph Ferruginous Hawk I encountered this immature Red-tailed Hawk at Farmington Bay WMA. The lighting conditions were horrible for photography because the hawk was in deep shade as the sun rose over the mountains behind it (my shutter speed was only 1/80 at ISO 800 if that tells you anything).

What stands out for me about this bird is the sharply defined bright white spots on its scapulars and back. Many red-tails have whitish markings there but they’re much more diffuse and not so bright. I think they’re so distinctive and well defined on this bird they look like polka dots.

 

 

Here’s a young immature Red-tailed Hawk for the sake of comparison. In my experience this bird is far more typical of the species.

 

 

And this is an intermediate morph adult.

Neither hawk I’ve featured here is rare but they’re different enough that I took notice so I thought my readers might be interested in seeing them too.

Ron

 

 

20 Comments

  1. The variances are amazing within a species. I think the light morph furgies are the most beautiful of the hawks.

  2. Superb series Ron!Thanks for sharing!

    Charlotte

  3. Ron, what an interesting post. These hawks are beautiful birds and I enjoy seeing them so much, along with your other bloggers. Thank you for your continued efforts to educate us along with showing us beautiful and interesting birds.

  4. Very interesting to see. 🙂 the dark morph is so intriguing.

  5. Interesting that you saw two oddballs at almost the same time. You should buy a lottery ticket! For me, the polka-dot Redtail was most fascinating.

  6. Thanks Ron…I second or third the motion that the comparative photos were the best.
    I learned so much and I swear if I’d seen that dark-morph Ferrugie, I would have been
    stumped. As always, I love my daily photo magic that comes in my inbox. Be well!

    • Karen, most of us are what we in the education business used to call “visual learners” and that’s why I included the comparison shots. Thanks for mentioning it.

  7. I’m with Nancy — I love that you go back into your archives to add to the “teachable moments” in your blog. 🙂 The second shot is a wowzer — the alulae deployed, the primaries spread, and those ventral feathers popping up — soooo cool! I would hate to be a small critter with that flying over me!

    Finally saw some coots hanging out with the resident Mallards on my morning walk — it’s gonna be a good day! 😀

  8. Your attention to details and memory of them makes your blog a lot more interesting than if it were just the best of daily or recent photos.

  9. Interesting! What a beautiful dark morph with VERY clear contrast between the rich brown and white….. The 2nd shot you can sure tell from his feathers that he’s been in motion……. The red-tailed with “spots” vs. muted splotches is also different. Of course, a casual observer like myself would probably not have noticed these details unless pointed out…. 😉 Thx! 🙂

  10. The dark morph Ferruginous Hawk is a handsome bird and a couple nice shots, but your lighter morph taken at another time, but shown as an example is gorgeous. That’s a shot I think I would have on my wall. The unusual Red-tail’s plumage is quite attractive and makes for a very interesting photo even in the light conditions you describe. Interesting post – thanks. Any snow up there yet? We were supposed to have some last night, but pretty dark now at 6 am and I have not looked out yet.

    • Thanks, Everett.

      Nope, no snow yet but it’s “supposed” to be coming in over the next few days. It’s been raining lightly off and on for a day or two but it was 40° at 4 AM this morning so a little too warm for snow.

  11. They are all spectacular, Ron. Thanks so much!

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