While watching the eclipse Monday I noticed this bird flying along the treeline north of my shop. Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures but it was 350-500 yards away. Tried to include as many different views as I took and as you can see, it's much larger then the crow that was giving chase. Albino Red-tail, Gyrfalcon? If I see it again, I hope to get a better picture.
- Don Neumann
Wow, Don! Nothing wrong with the pictures you've sent! I think you guessed right with albino Red-tailed Hawk, but I'll email some top-gun birders to see what they think. They may post their Comments here directly, or I'll post their email replies if I hear from them. (Thanks for the eclipse too!) - Ric
1 comment:
Thanks to Phil Chu for this reply:
"I suspect you're right about the albino raptor being a Red-tailed Hawk -- there's nothing in the shape or size of the photographed bird to indicate a different species. For some reason, albinism is 'way' more common in Red-taileds than in any other North American raptor. I'd guess that a high percentage of active birdwatchers have seen one or a few substantially or mostly white Red-taileds (whereas most of us have seen zero such individuals of other raptor species)."
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