Red-shouldered hawk
Buteo lineatus
Identification Tips:
- Sexes similar
- Short, dark, hooked beak
- Large, fairly long-tailed, broad-winged hawk
- Pale, translucent crescent at base of primaries
Adult:
- Brown head
- Reddish breast and underwing coverts
- Pale belly barred heavily with reddish
- Reddish lesser uppersecondary coverts appear as reddish shoulder at rest
- Flight feathers dark above with white barring
- Flight feathers pale below with dark barring
- Dark tail has several narrow white bars
- Florida birds (B. l. extimus) are paler about the head and have much paler bre
- California (B. l. elegans) and Texas (B. l. texanus) birds are much richer red
Immature:
- Pale supercilium
- Brown head, back and upperwing coverts
- Small reddish patch on lesser secondary upperwing coverts
- Underwing mostly pale, with faint barring on flight feathers
- Dark brown tail with narrow buff bands
Similar species:
Young Red-tailed Hawks can resemble young Red-shoulders, but lack the pale
crescents in the outer wing and have a quite different shape, being much
broader-winged, broader-tailed and often soaring with more of a dihedral.
Adult Broad-winged Hawk is similarly patterned but lacks red shoulders, lacks
pale translucent crescents, has black and white bands on tail of even width
and a crisp black border to underwing. Immature Broad-winged is quite similar
but can be distinguished by the same tail pattern criteria that is useful for
adults. In flight note the lack of translucent pale crescents in wings, as
well as the quite different shape: Broad-winged Hawks are very broad-winged
and short-tailed, while Red-shouldered Hawks have long, narrow wings that
flare out at the rear edge and have longer tails.