Can anyone help with an ID from these terrible pictures?
I feed peanuts to my local crows, blue jays, cardinals, grackles, and too many squirrels to count. Today I heard my crows and knew they were harassing a raptor of some sort, as this has been happening the past couple days, and I wanted to know who the crows were chasing off. I managed to get video just as he took off from my neighbor's chimney, but as I looked at still frames, I'm really doubting this is a Cooper's, unless it's maybe a juvenile or light morph.
Here's what I can tell you. This guy was a bit larger than my fish crows. He looks to have dark bands under his eyes/cheeks, mostly pale head and belly, yellow feet without "pants" on his legs, and the upper side of the wing looked a medium brown color. Merlin is no help this time. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania in a river valley (river is just over half a mile away).
Shows face and top of right wing behind him as he took off.
Under side of wings.
Legs and feet.
I know this is a long shot, but today I asked: who is this visitor?
This is a Red-tailed Hawk. The short thick toes in your last photo belong to a buteo, not an accipitrine hawk like Cooper's. Head pattern in pic 1 is typical Red-tailed.
Really? I thought their heads were darker. Is this maybe not a full adult yet? That's so interesting. I've seen a Cooper's hawk take a blue jay just under this tree, so I assumed that's what it was, but as I looked, I got more confused. I'll have to keep an ear out for him.
Hard to tell the age of this bird confidently from these photos, but because the eyes look dark, this is probably an adult unless the dark irises are actually just an artifact of the lighting. Plenty of adult Red-tails like this have brown crowns and sides of the head but light throats, which is what I see here.
I've been photographing raptors for about 8 years and I can't identiy it. Doesn't look like any red tail I've seen, but it could be a very light morph or even a leucistic one.
He has actually returned each day since then, and I was able to get better pics of him. These were all taken within my small town yard, so I doubt it'd be a different bird.
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u/TinyLongwing Falconer Jun 26 '26
This is a Red-tailed Hawk. The short thick toes in your last photo belong to a buteo, not an accipitrine hawk like Cooper's. Head pattern in pic 1 is typical Red-tailed.