Every winter I am amazed at the number of black Red-tailed Hawks hanging out here in the Bitterroot - Harlan's Hawks, a subspecies that breeds in Alaska and near-by Canada (HA on this Cornell Labs map.) We enjoy 14 subspecies of Red-tailed Hawks in North America and Harlan's was considered a separate species in the past (and some feel still should be.) This is an adult dark morph and the more I think of it, that young hawk (light eyes, barred tail) from Sunday could be a light intermediate Harlan's, lacking the warm brown colors of our resident calurus subspecies (CA on the map.) Man, do these hawks come in all varieties of plumages, and even dark morph calurus birds. The adult Harlan's tail is white, usually a terminal dark band and to further complicate things, sometimes a faint red tint as well. Check 'em out on Eastside Highway.
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