hey all, just got back from Iona and on the way in i spotted a strange raptor that the crows weren't happy to see either.
quite dark overall, my first impression was that it was one of the airport falconeers Harris's hawks although i didn't notice chestnut shoulder patches and it didn't have any leg straps visible either.
At one point it flew from a tree to the fence and i saw that it's wings were quite white underneath.
Looking at the field guide at home now i'm struck by how similar the picture of the dark morph looks like my bird.

Please correct my ID if i'm wrong

just bumping this so that it might get some responses.
A few have suggested that it is actually a Harlan's Red-tailed hawk although it's not 100% at this point.

Any takers?

Hi Paul,

I looked at this for a long time last night, and ended up just shaking my head and going on to something else.

I think this is one of those cases where a well written field description would be far more valuable than a photograph. The undertail pattern suggests Broad-winged Hawk, but not quite perfectly. There are also features which suggest Red-tailed Hawk, but not perfectly. Although it's certainly suggestive of Broad-winged Hawk, I honestly can't say what it is.

What do you think it is, and why?

Thanks Guy for commenting (i was hoping to hear from you), Red-tailed hawk was not my first impression upon seeing this bird, the size seemed a bit smaller than some of the R-T hawks i've seen in the past. Les mentioned that Broad-winged are about the same size as crows and while i can't say with certainty, it seemed to be around the same size as the crows harassing it.
Looking at the guidebook, i noticed that R-T hawks seem to always have a whitish chin/throat area and this bird was a solid dark brown.
Honestly, at the time i thought it was a captive bird out working the airport property and didn't think much more about it until i got home later.

Michelle Lamberson got some shots of a similar-looking bird last year (that was ID'd as Harlan's) at around the same location and looking at her shots on Flickr, it does look similar.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrain/3245362077/in/photostream/

It was nice to meet you and thanks for posting your flyby picture [I had forgotten to reset
from ISO 800]. I don't have much useful to add right now. While from these pictures I don't
think you can definitely say NO chestnut shoulders you should be able to see white under
the tail. And Harris Hawks are really a south-western bird, although some eejit thought to
import a bunch a while back. So the chances of seeing a wild one are pretty small. Plus no
jesses (possible) but no bands either. And if you saw it fly, almost no chance you could
miss a number of very distinctive and unique features. Leaving just the weird & wonderful.

Did you get any other photos of the bird?

these shots were never posted for obvious reasons
the almost black and white shots were camera malfunction shots, i had a series of 4 shots that came out black for some reason.
after PS'ing the life out of them i was able to pick up some of what was going on.
I'm hoping these fleeting glimpses of the wings will help.

I was never set up properly in the car when all this was was going on, it happened so fast but i did get something.

nice to meet you too goony, another face to a name

I think so ... the Wheeler & Clark book has an adult dark-morph Swainson's that looks
quite a lot like these. We're way off the path for a Swainson's unless this is a migration
stopover. There are dark-morph Ferruginous but they would be huge plus we're in the
wrong region.

Broad-wing is a likely candidate but I don't think the tail is good. They should be more
stripey, no?

So going by the terminal dark band on the wings and tail I think it's a dark-morph RT
of some kind. Wheeler & Clark have a dark/rufous intergrade that looks about right for
the overall colours.

I think the brown eye pretty much guarantees it's an adult.

Yes, these photos do help immensely. It's a Red-tailed Hawk of some kind. Maybe a rufous morph, harlan's intergrade?