Red-tailed Hawk, Aptly Named

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Some bird species have been assigned names that make little or no sense to me. In some cases, the name is downright misleading. My favorite example is the Ring-necked Duck. I’ve made hundreds of images of this species over the years and it’s safe to say that 99 percent of them do not show a ring around the duck’s neck. It’s true that if the lighting is just right and you use your imagination you can sometimes make out a faint ring, but that’s hardly a useful field mark for identifying the duck. Oddly, that species has a ring around its beak, but it’s not named the Ring-beaked Duck. Go figure.

Now, on the other hand, the Red-tailed Hawk’s name strikes me as about as perfectly descriptive as a bird’s name can be.

The overwhelming majority of adult Red Tails have pronounced brick-red tails. If you see one of these birds and you can get a view of its tail’s upper surface, that brick-red color definitively identifies the hawk. Now, there are some exceptions to the rule. Juvenile Red Tails don’t have red tails. And, there is a variant of this species that lacks the solid red tail, but that accounts only for a tiny percentage of Red Tails’ overall population.

So let’s celebrate the fact that, for this species, the name is descriptive.

Image made with a Canon R5, Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 IS L zoom lens, M setting (auto ISO), ISO 500, f7.1 @ 1/1000, +2/3 stop exposure compensation.