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What Bird is this? (1 Viewer)

Okay, so i’m pretty new at birding but have seen and photographed a lot for a 13 year old, but don’t know Whether the birds are large hawks, eagles, or vultures. Can someone please help me with this?
 

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Hi there and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum :t:

Kind of hard to tell from these pics but they have the shape of a Hawk and definitely not a Vulture
 
Hi HawkWatcher and a warm welcome from me too.

I'm sure you will enjoy it here and I hope to hear about all the birds you see when out and about.
 
Hello Hawkwatcher and welcome to the forum. Nice of you to join in.
 
thank you all for the warm welcome! And sorry I got confused, I didn't know what bird I was seeing and wanted help identifying it asap.


(p.s. I managed to narrow the birds down to golden eagles or red tailed hawks)
 
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thanks for the suggestion Tero. I think these are more likely golden eagles than red tailed hawks. The birds are much larger than a red tails true hieght so it makes some sense these are golden eagles and not red tails. I took these pictures November 7th, 2017, winchester VA, in my backyard.
 
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I'm comparing images of perched golden eagles to perched red tailed hawks, im doing a back view because that the way the birds were facing. So far, golden eagles seems to match the images more than red tail hawks.
 
Hi again Hawkwatcher

I've decided to move your thread to the Bird ID forum, as I think you're more likely to get the help you need there.

I see you're already subscribed to the thread, so you should be able to find it very easily.
 
Hi Hawk Watcher
From the shape, and experience specifically looking at perched red tailed kites on visits to US, and wondering much the same as you, I too would suggest 'an eagle', but would not want to narrow it much further, as there is little to pick up from the photos for other identification markers.
I have not been on the forum long, but have find this particular thread very useful, so keep visiting.
Harry
 
I'll agree with an eagle. i do have large backyardwith lots of woods and grassland, despite living in a large neighborhood, and Abrams creek is quite close to my house.I saw a similar hawk/eagle-like bird last sunday too. The bird was large with it being primarily brown. When it flew away, I estimated its wing span was 6-7 feet. It had no vulture-like features and was too big to be a hawk as well. Perhaps these are juvenile bald eagles or golden eagles?
 
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I seriously doubt it. but always a possibility. Turkey vultures have long, narrow necks compared to hawks, eagles, kites, falcons, and ospreys. also, the flight style was very different from a vultures when they took of from the tree, the birds flapped 7-8 times before doing a 2-3 glide, a flight style used by hawks and eagles. Turkey vultures will instead mainly soar on thermal updrafts and rarely flap at all. But like I said, always a possibility.
 
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I still doubt they are buzzards or turkey vultures. They have the shape of an eagle more than they do of a vulture. also, look at the size of the birds, they are bigger than red tails and look larger than vultures.
 
I still doubt they are buzzards or turkey vultures. They have the shape of an eagle more than they do of a vulture. also, look at the size of the birds, they are bigger than red tails and look larger than vultures.
The head on the right one looks pretty small though. In any case, as far as the grainy nature of the picture allows (don't worry, thats not criticism - plenty of my own pictures are like that), it looks like there is a primary projection beyond the tail tip, which is one of the features that speak against Golden Eagle.
 
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