Albino Red-tailed Hawk

3/4/18
As I needed to get out today, I ended up driving around locally.  Near  Maplegrove, the center of historical abundance for White-tailed Kites in Polk County, I saw what at first was assumed to be one of these kites with lots of white plumage.  But after a few seconds it just did not look quite right, and my next assumption was that it was a bright immature Rough-legged Hawk.  By then I had pulled off the road, and through the binocs I could see it was a mostly albino Red-tailed Hawk.   This was not a big surprise as I have seen one in this general area annually for the last 2 years.

As I was readying the camera, he took off.  I could see the “zebra” like dark/white effect on his wings since the dark flight feathers were interspersed in the more white ones.  He flew toward another hawk some 150 yards away, and when he got there, he must have figured it was his time to procreate and landed on top of her and did his thing, so that is how I knew it was a “he.”  Then he perched next to his mate and I took a few long range pics, like about 250 yards out. One can probably also assume from the last 2 pics the albino was a male as compared to the one he perched next to, as the size difference does seem apparent since we know that female raptors are larger than males.  Maybe next time I will get better pics and maybe have better equipment to do that with.