AboutRoger Lederer Expertise Any and all about wild birds - the science of ornithology. Information about birdwatching, ecology, conservation, migration, behavior, banding, rehabilitation, feeding, songs, binoculars, identification, and careers in ornithology. No questions about pet or caged birds, please.
Experience Have a PhD and thirty eight years as a professional ornithologist - research, teaching, author, speaker, webmaster of Ornithology.com . Have written thirty scientific papers, two bird field guides, a textbook in ecology and two recent books entitled "Amazing Birds" and "Birds of New England". Have traveled to over 80 countries watching birds.
Hello again Roger;
We have many bird visitors. We are basically familiar with most of them,but needless to say not all. We have some very tall (50+ ft)trees upon which perch various birds of prey.We've become familiar with the owls, the osprey, 'chicken hawk', but we don't know these 3. Since their visits are daily and / or frequent I'd like to do a reading on them.
The pair(?) almost always travels together, seldom do we see one without the other.I am really fascinated by these two- is the difference in color a matter of sex /maturity, or something other ?
Answer You don't tell me where you live, which is necessary for me to confirm the identification, but these look like immature Red-shouldered Hawks to me. There is a lot of variation in (most)hawks' coloration depending on the part of the country and immatures add another level of variation.
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