Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk

Again, I am just getting some pics I took last week cropped and uploaded. This was an immature Red-tailed Hawk I watched chasing another Red-tailed Hawk in Canon City. This photo shows well the multiple dark bands in their light brown, not red, tails of juvenile Red-tailed Hawk.

This bird is an Eastern morph Red-taled Hawk in which the wingtips fall far short of the tip of the tail. These juveniles tend to have fairly pale heads and the whitish streaks in the head feathers of this bird are visible. The whitish mottling on the scapular area is indicative of the common morphs of Western and Eastern Red-tailed Hawks, both juvenile and adult plumages.

Thoough the most common hawk in North America, their many races and morphs provide a good deal of variation that makes their identification interesting.
SeEtta