Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Not a Rough-legged

A current discussion thread on BIRDCHAT centers around a photograph of a raptor from a physics textbook. The textbook presents the photograph as part of a physics problem, namely finding the difference in voltage between the bird's feet. The online copy of the photograph identifies it as a Rough-legged Hawk, but that appears to be wrong.

I say that it is an immature dark or intermediate morph Swainson's Hawk. What does everyone else think?