This fairly-large bird (maybe needless warning - shows dead squirrel in little detail at all, fwiw)was seen to have made a kill (of said squirrel) in our backyard. Daughter saw it happen as she was feeding dinner to out Cockatoo. The raptor ‘hopped’ up onto an old ‘entertainment center’ I have sitting in middle of backyard which is where and when I started taking pics. I went outside at corner of house maybe 30 feet away from bird and started taking pics, and I also include a pic that has a foot-long ruler (orange colored) for size comparison taken at same zoom-level and distance of most of pictures.
What raptor did we see? Location is ~Southern/Central Oklahoma, and more or less in middle of mid-sized city.
The photos don’t show it too well, but it has the “belly band” of dark spots across the light chest, a distinctive RTH feature that’s nearly always present.
I thought red-tailed hawk as well, to be honest, but the bird had zero color other than shades of brown/gray to white. I’ve handled mature red-tailed’s in the past (long ago) and they seemed MUCH smaller overall than this fellow seemed to be be. Just an impression, though, not ‘factual’ by any means. This was a large-in-body bird, but still might be a red-tailed.
My non-professional guess is that it is young-ish and only showing its ‘immature’ colors’ at this point (making ID harder, of course). I could be very wrong, no doubt. But again, it had NO colors showing anywhere on its body, just the shades of brown/gray and white. Maybe a tad of yellow to its beak (??). Since we have an Umbrella Cockatoo and I am somewhat familiar with birds, I was looking hard for ANY identifying features since my daughter REALLY wants to ID this bird. Its fascinating that such a thing happened in our back yard, to be honest.
Good a place as any to mention…there is currently a snowy owl irruption going on in the northeast and midwest. Some have been seen as far south as North Carolina and even Bermuda!
First-year Red-tails have no red in their tails. Your bird looks to be a normal RTH.
First-year birds are full adult size by the time they fledge. In the case of females, this can be substantial - I’ve seen falconers with birds as large as 48 oz (over 1300 g).
My first choice would be red tail, they get their adult colors about the 3rd or 4th year I believe. The beak seems a little on the small side like falcons and the legs appear a little long for a red tail but I can’t think of anything else that would fit here.
I agree with Juvie Redtail. Been a lot here in So Cal this fall. We had a pair of red shuldered hawks raise a chick here last year, they are gorgeous birds. At first sighting I thought it was a giant robin!!:D:D
Wr have had a huge increase in cooper hawks the past 10 years here in Torrance, just south of Los Angeles. I see them daily now, 20 years ago it was maybe once every few years.
That buzzard is not found in the USA. It is a hawk found in England and Europe. The bird that some call a “buzzard” here is not a hawk but a vulture. Somehow the first colonials mistook our vultures for your buzzard and called them buzzards. That misnomer has stuck. It doesn’t look anything like a vulture.