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Raptor Identification (1 Viewer)

Greetings from Veracruz Mexico:
I recently spent several weeks digiscoping and birding the the Tuxtlas Mountains. I was able to get photos of two fledgling raptors. The attatchment is in form of a collage, all views of the same raptor. I spent a little more than two hours observing the fledglings before I identified them. This species is also found in the US.
Raptor ID can be a challenge and IDing juveniles even more so.
Any forum member have any ideas as to the ID of this juvenile?
Good birding,
David McCauley
Tlacotalpan, Veracruz
 

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Got me, David. At first I thought it must be an Osprey, of course, but the dark underparts seem to eliminate anything in Sibley, and I haven't got a decent book for farther south, just Irby Davis's old field guide.
 
Nothing in Lynx HBW to match it, but they only show adults, not juveniles, so it must be a species with a distinct juvenile plumage.

To narrow it down, my guess would be a Buteo or one of the allied Buteo-like genera (Buteogallus etc). That very distinctive head pattern should be easy to pin down with a decent field guide to the area. It certainly isn't a species also found north of the US border, though!

Michael
 
No, can't find anything, could be a partial albino, but of what I don't know. Don't suppose it could be a Red-tail
Trev
 
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Depends on which book you read!

It is Buteo nitidus in Lynx HBW and Voous' List of recent Holarctic bird species; Asturina nitida in the AOU checklist (the AOU often tend to split genera more than other authorities).

Michael

Edit added: Also Buteo nitidus in the old Golden Press guide (Robbins, Bruun & Singer) and the second edition of the National Geographic, so at least some US field guides use it. Suggests the genus split is a recent one in terms of AOU usage (e.g. 3rd ed. Nat Geog., and Sibley guides)
 
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The inclusion of this species in Asturnia is based on behaviour and particularly moult related details. It has been suggested that both this species and Roadside Hawk, and others (incl. Red-shouldered Hawk) should however be placed in the genus Rupornis. Ferguson-lees (Raptors of the World, 2001) suggests that all these species may be more closely related to the 'white hawks' of the genus Lecopterus than to anything in Buteo.

MV
 
Hi MV,

Saw all that (it is also, almost word-for-word, in HBW vol 2 [1994] - I wonder if Ferguson-lees was using HBW as his source, or if [more likely] both were using an older third source?). But I guess what we need to know is what it has in the book David McCauley is using!

Michael
 
The primary sources are presumably Amadon, D. 1982,. A revision of the sub-buteonine Hawks and Amadon and Bull. 1988. Hawks and Owls of the World, A Distributional and Taxonomic list.

The rationale for subdividing Buteo is strong.

MV
 
Hello all:

the photos are of a juvenile dark morph Short-tailed hawk
Buteo brachyurus
this was a mystery to me until I observed the adults, one light morph and the other dark morph. I was able to photograph what I assume to be the female in the nest, a light morph adult. the male (again assuming the sex) which I observed in flight above the nesting tree was a dark morph adult Short-tailed hawk.
 
Raptor ID Short-tailed Hawk

This is the photo I took of the light morph short-tailed hawk (female?) with the two fledglings in the nest.

Good birding
David McCauley
Tlacotalpan Veracruz Mexico
 

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