SW Florida USA - hawk-type (1 Viewer)

[Fandango739]

Seen this morning at the Estero Bay Preserve.
As a note, the area is still very soupy from the latest hurricane.
Many thanks for any help!

 

[Owene]

osprey?

 

[qwerty5]

Not Osprey, I'm thinking Red-shouldered Hawk.

 

[Fandango739]

I would have thought osprey, but all that dark streaking on the chest says it isn't a local osprey. If one looks carefully, there is a bar just over the eye and maybe a hint of a downward marking from the eye. The closest thing I see in my books is a dark Prairie Falcon, but I think we are well out of range. Could this be a Cuban bird, blown up by the storm? We do have a number of flamingos right now that were storm dropped.

 

[Andrew Whitehouse]

Looks okay for an immature Red-shouldered Hawk.

 

[lockbreeze926]

The pose and structure (when looking at the photos on the page) do suggest Red-shouldered Hawk but the face is a puzzler.

And is that barring rather than streaking? Hard to tell from the angle.

And the FL sub-species of RSH is very pale; this is notably dark, although that could just be the exposure.

So...probably RSH that has been foraging in a sooty garbage pile.

 

[qwerty5]

I would have thought osprey, but all that dark streaking on the chest says it isn't a local osprey. If one looks carefully, there is a bar just over the eye and maybe a hint of a downward marking from the eye. The closest thing I see in my books is a dark Prairie Falcon, but I think we are well out of range. Could this be a Cuban bird, blown up by the storm? We do have a number of flamingos right now that were storm dropped.

The light coloring over the eye is fine for Red-shouldered. The white on the back of the head is caused by the wind blowing up the feathers

 

[Butty]

A stocky Buteo with wide dark and rather-narrow pale tail-bars. Hence a juvenile of red-shouldered hawk or broad-winged hawk. I suspect the underparts may be better for red-shouldered hawk, but I don't know enough of the variability to pronounce on that. The secondaries don't look as clearly barred as one might expect on red-shouldered hawk, and I don't know how one would rule out broad-winged hawk.

 

[rkj]

Could this be a Cuban bird, blown up by the storm? We do have a number of flamingos right now that were storm dropped.

This may be a possibility. The closest match I can find for it is the Caribbean form of Broad-winged Hawk.

 

[qwerty5]

I don't know how one would rule out broad-winged hawk.

Probably too early. There are no eBird records in the county prior to mid-September.

 

[Jim M.]

The secondaries don't look as clearly barred as one might expect on red-shouldered hawk, and I don't know how one would rule out broad-winged hawk.

Red-shouldered for me. In the last two photos the secondaries appear distinctly barred; that rules out BWHA AFAIK. Something is making its head look strange--could be a number of things; everything else looks fine for RSHA.

 

[raymie]

Red-shouldered Hawk