Red-shouldered Hawk, Buteo lineatus
The beautiful adult Red-shouldered Hawk has red underparts, usually finely barred, and a black-and-white checkerboard pattern on the wings. The bird is one of the smallest of the buteo hawks, with a relatively slender build, longer tail, and more rounded wing tips that give it an appearance somewhere between a typical buteo, like the Red-tailed Hawk, and an accipiter, like the Cooper's Hawk. Red-shouldered mostly feed on small mammals, like other buteos, but also hunt birds, the primary prey of the accipiters; this accounts for their relatively slender build and rounded wingtips, adapted to rapid pursuit flight in wooded areas. The Red-shouldered in the two images directly below is feeding on a bird, in this case a larger one than usual, possibly a White-tailed Kite. The first seven pictures show California birds; the contrasting Florida type of Red-shouldered Hawk is illustrated further down the page.
The "red shoulder" that gives the species its common name is visible on the bird above, and also appears distinctly set off from the otherwise dark-and-white pattern of the wings, on the bird seen from the rear, and the nearer bird of the pair, pictured further down the page.
Red-shouldered Hawks have two entirely separate populations in North America, a western (mostly California) subspecies, and three eastern subspecies extending from the northeast to south Florida. The eastern birds are somewhat larger and generally more pale than the Californians, with the south Florida subspecies the palest. Above, a pair of California adults, one with wings raised; below, a Florida adult, wings raised in flight, showing much paler underparts.
First-cycle Red-shouldered Hawks, standing, from California, above, and Florida,
below. Like other raptors, Red-shouldereds retain their juvenal plumage for their
entire first year of life. The western juvenile has bib of thick vertical stripes on the
breast, with thick barring below; the stripes and bars can be red as in this individual,
or brown. The Florida bird has thinner stripes above and less well-defined bars below
and a higher ratio of light to dark feathers; the color is red here, compare the brown
coloring of the Florida juvenile in flight further down.
Above and below, California and Florida juveniles in flight. Where the California bird shows heavy striping on the bib, and heavy barring on the breast and belly, with the forward part of the wing heavily marked in reddish brown, the Florida juvenile is nearly white on the forward part of the wing, with an almost entirely white breast, only thin dark stripes making up the bib, and no barring but only a few dark spots below it. As noted above, the coloring of the dark parts of the undersurface varies among individuals of both types from red to brown.
