The other Harlan's Hawk, the more classical type

This is the 2nd Harlan's Hawk I photographed Sunday near Rocky Ford, Colorado. It is an intermediate morph with white on it's forehead (overlapping supercilium) and throat, white streaking on it's 'hindneck', dark crown, white streaks on breast and some white speckling on belly.

The wings just shorter than tail when perched upright as shown in middle pic. The bottom pic is interesting as it shows a lot of white feathers that, similar to the apparent dark morph in the previous post, appear to be 'underfeathers' that are visible when the wind blows the top feathers up. I still haven't found any documentation on that. SeEtta

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Dark morph Harlan's Hawk?

I found this jet black hawk near Rocky Ford, Colorado yesterday while I was doing some surveys for the Great Backyard Bird Count in poorly covered areas. It has almost all the field marks for a dark morph Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk as identified by Brian Wheeler in Raptors of Western North America. It does have a black head, dark brown iris, black underparts including black undertail coverts, black wings.

It is a jet black bird but it has some white feathers on it's nape or possibly white underfeathers as these were visible when the wind blew it's feathers up. It also has whitish lores. I did not get any photos, nor was I able to view, it's backside to get a view of the upperparts or if the wings were shorter than the tail. Tail is not clearly viewed but it appears to be banded and it clearly has wide terminal black band. I did not do any tweaking/editing on these photos. SeEtta

Destructive Tar Sands Oil-TED video

Family of Greater White-fronted Geese, winter visitors

These are a few of the 13 Greater White-fronted Geese that have spent the winter in Canon City, CO. Every winter for more than 15 years now a flock of Greater White-fronted Geese, from 7 to 13 birds, have migrated south to Canon City from their high arctic breeding area and overwintered here. Most of this species that spend the winter inland do so along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana. Canon City has demonstrated it is mild enough to support overwintering of small numbers of birds that normally winter further south.

Birds of North America online notes that the immature birds remain with their parents not only for their first year but for several years. So the birds that winter here are likely parents and several generations of their offspring. They will likely be leaving soon to fly back to their breeding territory.

The goose in top pic stands out as an adult bird, showing the white forehead and the dark stripes on the belly and lower breast area. The 2 geese in the middle pic have more limited white on forehead and ventral bars that are not as dark or wide as on the adult birds. The 2 geese in the back in the bottom pic appear to be first winter birds, with limited white on forehead and just developing black ventral bars while the bird in the front is an adult. SeEtta

Clouds over Wet Mountains in Colorado

Just some nice recent clouds that I have seen formed over the Wet Mountains that lie to the southwest of Canon City. In the top pic the strong winds formed this very smooth lenticular cloud that was backlit with a little color as the sun had just set. The bottom pic shows some strong color to clouds at sunset over the Wet Mountains. Only editing to these pics was to crop them. SeEtta

Bald Eagle in Bighorn Sheep Canyon of Colorado

I saw both this and a second adult Bald Eagle while driving through the Bighorn Sheep Canyon that runs west of Canon City to near Salida. Both of these eagles were perched over the Arkansas River just within a few miles to the east of Cotopaxi. I watched they surveyed the river below watching for fish go after. They were in the area where Christo plans to use large drilling rigs, like are used to drill for oil, to drill large holes in boulders along the river banks in order to erect tall poles that will hold the fabric that will be draped over the river. SeEtta

Handsome Barrow's Goldeneye

I found this flock composed of 1 male with his 8 female harem in Salida, CO at a small fishing lake called Sands Lake. As small as this lake is, it is really a large pond, it attracts and holds a good number of common waterfowl. For some reason it often has Barrow's Goldeneye during the winter.

The middle and especially the bottom pic show well the very steep forehead on this goldeneye species. With it's forehead feathers fully erect the the forehead appears to overhang the beak in the bottom pic. I think Barrow's Goldeneye are especially handsome duck. SeEtta

Townsend's Solitaire being unusually friendly

I was very surprised yesterday when this Townsend's Solitaire landed less than 10 feet away and stayed put while I photographed it. I have never found this species to be quite so tolerant of humans. And I was standing out in the open and had been taking photos so it would have heard the sounds of the mechanical shutter on my dslr releasing. There were several Townsend's Solitaire nearby and one had sang their sweet warbling song that brightens a winter day.

Both pics are the same, just the one on top was severely cropped to get a super close-up view. SeEtta