Dark intermediate morph Ferruginous Hawk on Wildlife Drive at Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR

[Ajit Antony]

We took our 8 year old grandson Oliver --who loves raptors and is excellent at finding them -- on a raptor trip and saw a beautiful adult dark intermediate morph Ferruginous Hawk at the end of the Wildlife Drive at Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR. Being dark morph, it was difficult to identify -- the other possibility being a dark morph Red-tailed Hawk. Reasons for our ID are on our eBird note below:

"Dark intermediate morph adult, rufous breasted type (see Raptors of Western North America by Brian K Wheeler) deep dark brown all over with reddish-black breast with brown feathers, long yellow gape reaching mid-eye, yellow cere, rufous feathers on scapulars, silvery edges to primaries when perched, gray-brown tail dorsally with narrow vague bands with rufous at the tip, when it flew could see white flashes on dorsum of the outer wings.  Initially seen on the ground in a prairie dog colony, then flew to a utility pole where it was not disturbed by our presence."

See eBird link for images:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S161677940

Dark and intermediate morph Ferruginous Hawk are rather unusual in that they represent only 0-10%, the remainder being light morph.

This is only the second FEHA that was not a light morph we have ever seen, the first one was seen only in flight in Boulder last 2022-23 winter.

Ajit & Liza Antony