Monday, September 22, 2014

Anybody Good at Bird Identification? - UPDATE: Mystery Solved!

Last week I was on my way home from a ride with CatMan when I stumbled upon this little guy by the side of the bike path.


He didn't fly off right away, so at first I was concerned that he might be hurt - but after he let me snap a few photos he quickly took to the sky.

So I've been trying to figure out exactly what kind of a bird it was. He (I say "he" but it could well be a female for all I know) anyhow, it was good sized, but not terribly big, maybe the size of a crow or a large pigeon, but from the beak and the bloomers I'm pretty confident it's some sort of a hawk or falcon.

I looked on a few bird identification sites, but I fear I'm not very good at this sort of thing.


None of them look quite right.

Maybe a Merlin hawk?

Merlin Hawk
Maybe a Red Tailed Hawk?

Red Tailed Hawk
Maybe a Prairie Falcon?

Prairie Falcon
Maybe a Swainson's Hawk?

Swainson's Hawk
Good lord. I look an enough pictures and they all start to look like hawk soup!

Well, anyhow, he was a neat looking bird, and he let me get pretty close to him which was cool - whatever kind of bird he is!

Here are a few more shots of him.



Anybody have any ideas?

I guess I'm sorta leaning toward Red Tailed Hawk - they are the most common raptors here in Colorado - but he doesn't look very red to me. Anybody want to take a crack at it?


UPDATE:

OK, so since virtually everybody had a different idea as to what it was, I finally contacted a fellow named Kin Quitugua, who is an expert on Colorado Raptors. He didn't offer any details, but said it was an immature Swainson’s Hawk. In these photos at least, the face certainly looks more like the Swainson's than any of the others. And according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology the young Swainson's are often seen on the ground in open places hunting grasshoppers - and there are a LOT of grasshoppers along that stretch of the bike path, which would completely explain what he was doing there on the ground. So there you have it! The expert weighs in!


26 comments :

  1. If he doesn't look red enough, he might be a juvenile- maybe try searching for pictures of juveniles and see if it is a closer match..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Holy Moly! This bird ID stuff is enough to make one crazy! I looked and juvenile pictures and now I have about 10 more candidates! Oy!

      Delete
  2. when he flew away was his tail/wings a specific shape? I know that here in Scotland, red kites are easy to identify because of their tail shape when flying but sitting on a tree or path - I wouldn't have a clue!
    Ax

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good questions, and I have no earthly idea. All I was thinking at that point was that I was glad he wasn't hurt. And my camera doesn't focus fast enough to take pictures of birds in flight. Sigh.

      Delete
  3. I'm not very good with bird ID either, but nice pictures. Did you try allaboutbirds.com? On that sight they give several pictures that often help if you haven't seen the "type" species.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that's one of the sites I tried... I gotta admit it's sorta overwhelming. Who knew there were soooo many different bird species!

      Delete
  4. I looked in my bird books and I think he is a Prairie Falcon. I have a lot of Red Tailed Hawks where I live, and he doesn't look anything like them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was kinda thinking that too... I asked 2 friends who are "bird people" and one said it was a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk, and the other thought it was a Cooper's Hawk. Good GAWD... I thought this was a simple question, apparently not!

      Delete
    2. I just remembered that my husband saw a juvenile red tailed hawk fly into the telephone pole on our street. He got me and I took a lot of close up pictures of it before it flew off. The pictures I have show his beak as dark all the way to his eyes and the very top center of his beak is bright yellow between his nostrils. Also, his neck and chest are much darker as well. I wish I knew how to post the pictures, but I'm tech challenged. HTH

      Delete
    3. I agree - the face just doesn't look like a red tail to me.

      Delete
  5. That's a prairie falcon. He's got fluffy white pants. Other hawks don't. It's distinctive.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm... interesting. Many of the photos I've seen of the prairie hawks have spotted bloomers - but maybe fluffiness trumps spots?

      Delete
  6. Birds are fun to watch, but I stink at identifying them. And they can differ in appearance based on male/female/adult/juvenile. Too tricky for me. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You said it! Plus when you look at pictures there's so much variability even within the same species. I'm glad I lucked into these photos, but holy moly... you gotta be much more um... let's say "detail oriented" than I am to get into bird watching!

      Delete
    2. I'm usually content to just say "ooh, pretty!". :)

      This reminds me of last summer--a tick attached itself to my daughter's head--paranoid mom that I am, I took her to the doctor to remove it. It was still alive, so they had me go to the health department to get it identified--sooooooooo I'm thinking, this lady should be a professional at IDing insects, right? She pulled out a brochure and asked which tick I thought it was. So much for professional ID. Then she proceeded to make my poor 8-year-old terrified by discussing all the awful things that might possibly happen to her (nothing did--she's fine). I don't have much faith in our local health department now ...

      Delete
    3. Yikes! I'd be scared if I found a tick too - the whole idea of something burrowing under the skin sorta creeps me out. Can't believe she wanted YOU to ID it though!

      Delete
    4. It took EVERY ounce of mental strength for me to stay calm, believe me! I had never seen a tick before, and then to see it burrowed in my girl's head .... freaky.

      Delete
  7. Swainson's hawk. I try to ID birds, but it is not easy - I work with biologists, but they are rarely in my office. Otherwise I'd ask.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OK... well, that vote officially takes me back to square 1! Well, I guess nobody's voted for the Merlin yet so we can probably cross him off the list. At least this whole process makes me feel like less of an idiot for not being able to just look at a few pictures and go "Of course, it's a bla bla bla hawk!"

      Delete
  8. I vote for immature red-tailed hawk. I've spent so much time looking at the Cornell University RTH nest cam for the last 3 years that I finally think I know one when I see it. Cornell link will be supplied upon request.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well... now that's interesting, and coming from someone who's familiar with what a juvenile red-tailed hawk looks like I'm giving your vote extra weight! I'd LOVE to see the nest cam - not necessarily for ID'ing purposes, just so I can ooh and aah over baby birds! :-)

      Delete
    2. Cornell provides access to several nest cams, including its own RTH nest, at allaboutbirds.org. The Facebook page is facebook.com/birdcams. No baby RTH this time of year, alas (the main action at this nest is from March to June). But lots of still photos, including a rehab update on a young RTH who was injured shortly after fledge this year. (He couldn't be in better hands than Cornell's!)

      Delete
    3. OK... gonna have to check that out! ;-)

      Delete
  9. Showed a photo to a biologist at work. It might be a Swainsons (mine was a wild guess), but can't really know without seeing the breast. The Swainsons would have a dark bib on the breast. I see brownish speckled hawks often in Denver, but never know what they are.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wish I'd been able to get more camera angles, but I guess that's a pipe dream. It's interesting though that even a biologist can't be sure just based on these photos.

      Delete

I welcome your thoughts so please leave me a comment and I promise I will respond.

On older posts I've had to enable comment moderation to prevent spammers, so don't worry if your comment doesn't show up right away - unless you're just commenting for the sake of embedding a link, in which case I really wish you wouldn't waste your time or mine because I'll just delete it.

Thanks, and have a fabulous day!