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A friend and I went looking for a Rough-legged hawk that had been reported a few hours drive south of here. This is one of the hawks that we saw in the area where the Rough-legged Hawk had been seen. It was kiting over the prairie. Could this be the dark morph? Is it an immature White-tailed Hawk? I have four pics but I'll start with this one b/c I think it is the most telling. All of the photos have been lightened up a ton -- the lighting was bad but the bird also seems really dark.
Safe to rule out White-tailed, the wing shape is wrong for that.
Not sure it's a Rough-leg, though, the tail looks uniformly barred to the tip (no obvious dark bar at the tip), and the primaries don't have a clear white patch. My guess (not definitive! I may be wrong ;-) is Harlan's subspecies Red-tailed, which seems to fit a bit better.
