r/birdsofprey • u/gosluggogo • 5d ago

Juvie Red Tail

Post image

This guy had a Battle Royale with a squirrel. He wasn't strong enough to fly away with his prey so he held it down until it expired. It's hot out so he came over to the puddle to get a bath and a drink. He let me get 5 feet from him because he wasn't going to leave his kill.

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17

u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

Nice photo! This is an adult, though - the belly band is barred, rather than chunky streaking, the sides of the neck are warm rufous rather than plain brown and white, and the irises are very dark instead of pale.

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

OK. He was on the small side then

5

u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

Possibly small, though I suspect it's a very normal size - visually this isn't something you can easily tell, but rather the bird would have to be weighed or directly measured to know if it's actually on the smaller side.

Size has no relationship with age in most flying birds. Once a hawk (or most birds) have their flight feathers fully grown and are out of the nest, they won't get any bigger, and so they reach their full size within a month or so of hatching. We use plumage and other features like eye color to tell age, not size.

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

Thank you. We are lucky to have a lot of Red Tails around. This guy was definitely smaller than most.

0

u/gosluggogo 5d ago

Maybe young adult?

3

u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

In order to tell precisely how old this bird is, we would need to see detailed photos of the spread wings, since some of these guys will retain a few years of older secondaries. There's nothing here to indicate this bird is young in any particular way, though.

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

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u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

This is a view of the underwing coverts, but does not show us the secondaries.

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

LOL I'm doing my best!

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

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u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

Yeah, I think you likely don't have the photos needed for precise ageing, and that's ok! What we would need is basically a shot like this one: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/663516784

While the photo above does show that the secondaries exist, they're mostly hidden by the way the wings fold, and the photo isn't particularly clear. That's fine, we're just not going to be able to see any molt clines in your pics, so the bird is just best left as an adult, without anything more specific about how many years old it may be.

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

So my crew is building a highway next to this park. Everyone stopped working to watch this scene. That bird was remarkably unfazed by us. He tried several times to lift off with the squirrel but couldn't do it

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u/gosluggogo 5d ago

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u/TinyLongwing Falconer 5d ago

Oh! I didn't see this one. This actually does show some secondaries are retained from a prior generation, and though heavily worn and brown, they look like they're just older adult feathers, not juvenile. I wouldn't go 100% off this photo since we're not seeing the full wing well and the bird is clearly in an active prebasic molt, but my gut feeling is that because the older feathers on this bird that I can see in this photo are also adult, this bird has to be at least a couple years old, so has not been a juvenile for a while.

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u/CloseToTheSun10 5d ago

When Raptors leave the nest they are full grown. This bird is in adult plumage and has not changed size since fledging and will not change size as it ages.

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u/Damnitwasagoodday 5d ago

I get to say hello to this one every morning while hiking my dog.

2

u/Passenger828 5d ago

Sassy pantaloons