I spent the morning at Susquehanna State Park in Harford County and encounterd a Red-tailed Hawk that has me puzzled. I initially saw the bird move just inside the edge of some woods adjacent to a field I had just crossed-I wasn't sure what I was looking at just yet. The bird perched with it's back to me, but I had a clear view through my bins, enough to see that the tail was brown-banded-not a trace of red. The back plumage struck me as more Red-tailed than Red-shouldered, but I was sure this was a young bird, one that would have hatched last year, not an adult. I took a half step to my right to adjust my view, which was fortuitous because I got a clear shot of the bird as it let out the typical Red-tail keee-eear scream and proceded to dive bomb me. I watched through the bins as he got bigger and bigger and eventually pulled up (about 10 feet from my head-very cool) and perched in a tree close by. Now I had the front view. The bird didn't have a typical belly band-most of the streaking was at the top of the breast-and he still struck me as a young bird. I clicked off a couple photos and then turned to the spot the bird had taken off from. I immediately noticed a large stick nest with a fuzzy head sticking up. At this point, another adult bird made a quick pass over the nest, screamed, and proceded to dive bomb me too. This one was a typical adult with a bright red tail, and after the scare tactics were over with, it landed in a tree next to the one where the other bird was perched. Everything I've read on the topic says Red-taileds don't start to get their adult plumage until they're a year old, and don't breed until they're two or three years old. So is this bird a precocious male getting an early start on a family, or is his plumage just atypical (an adult Red-tailed without a red tail?). I posted a photo (front view) of the bird in question here http://www.flickr.com/photos/27381338@N03/6976517602/in/photostream . I couldn't get a photo of the top of the tail, but I had a crystal clear view and it was banded with no feathers that looked like they had any red in them. I'd welcome opinions/observations about this particular bird or Red-tailed breeding age tendencies in general.

Mark Johnson
Aberdeen

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