Varieties of Red-tailed Hawk Plumage in the North Okanagan

Red-tailed Hawk - brown-chested adult. About 20% of North Okanagan Red-tails are brown-chested.

The North Okanagan is home to more varieties of Red-tailed Hawks than I have seen anywhere else in North America. By varieties I mean plumage varieties,variable plumages being a feature for which the Red-tail is well known.

Red-tails are both resident and migrant in the North Okanagan. For the past several years I have been keeping a rough track of the plumage types I have seen. I haven't formerly analysed my data yet but I have formed some impressions.

The majority of residents are light morph birds, by which I mean they have dark upperparts and lighter underparts. Many, perhaps as many as 25%,  resemble the adult calurus (a widespread western subspecies) illustrated on page 145 of the new (6th edition- 2011) of National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America.

The image above shows a fairly typical calarus type, though the large white feathers showing in the folded wing are unusual.


About 30% of North Okanagan Red-tailed Hawks are intermediate or dark morph birds, two thirds of these being brown-chested birds like the one shown at the top of this article. Here's another variation of the brown-chested Red-tail

 photographed

Perhaps the most uncommon plumage locally is that of pale birds like this immature shown below ( Swan Lake - 1 March 2013). Some birders are too quick to slap a label like Krider's Red-tail on such a bird. Since we don't know whether the bird is local (which is out-of-range for Krider's) and simply the product of a local genetic mutation, it's perhaps best to call it just a white breasted type.

Complicating matters are Harlan-type Red-tailed Hawks that appear in the North Okanagan as both
birds of passage and as winter residents. Harlan's Red-tail can be dark morph or light morph. It appears that dark morph Harlan's-types are much more commonly encountered in the North Okanagan than light morph Harlan's which I have yet to identify with certainty.

Below is a dark morph immature which could possibly be a dark morph Harlan's type photographed at Okanagan Landing in winter.