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This ferruginous hawk is seen from every angle, at rest and on the wing, thanks to the Crossley-style presentation in The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors.

Western grassland, sagebrush desert, and shrub-steppe environments are the preferred breeding habitats of the Ferruginous Hawk, but in winter it can be found in more altered landscapes such as agricultural land, especially when ground squirrels are present.

Light adults are strikingly beautiful birds! They are pure white underneath with bold rufous leggings and spectacular rufous upperwings. Plumage of adults is variable, with many showing faint to heavy rufous mottling on the underwing coverts, and rufous streaking on the underbody with whitish flight feathers. Light adults have whitish primaries that “flash” white on top, and whitish, grayish, or even reddish mottled tails. Dark adults are solid dark rufous-brown below with a grayish brown “bib” and head, or dark brown underneath with a rufous bib, but still show the strikingly contrasting whitish flight feathers. Dark adults typically have grayish tails and often lack prominent pale primary “panels” from above.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

Today’s featured blogs are:

The Fat Finch, Bird Brain Blog – They are riffing on raptors in Native American mythology.

Flying Mullet – A South Florida birder’s take on the raptors of Everglades National Park

In case you missed this yesterday, don’t forget to check in at Nemesis Bird, too. His photo quiz is still going on for the remainder of this week.

For the complete list of scheduled posts, please click here.

Today’s featured blogs are:

10,000 Birds has a terrific article on the Common Black Hawk by Mike Bergin.

There will be numerous contests sprinkled throughout the tour and the first up is a Raptor ID Quiz at Nemesis Bird. Check them out for a chance to win a Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Prize Package valued at $125!

About.com Birding/Wild Birds is posting a quick introduction to the types of raptors found in North America. Also, check out their March Madness, but with raptors. Who will end up in the Final Four? (ps, a review too)

For the complete list of scheduled posts, please click here.

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Would you recognize these migrating birds as Mississippi Kites (side note, I have to spell out Mississippi like a little kid every time I type it). The plates in The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors use repeat exposure to help you distinguish between raptors in the field and even at great distances.

Mississippi Kites migrate in large flocks through parts of Texas and Mexico. On migration, note the falcon-like shape in a glide and soar. They rocket through the sky with wings arched back, appearing falcon-like in shape. Sometimes they slow down and hunt for insects which they rip apart on the wing. They tend to be in flocks with birds their own age. Juveniles depart from the breeding grounds as soon as their feathers are fully grown, leaving the adults to rear the remaining offspring. Some may not leave the nest until as late as early September.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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What happens when you take away the color-markings of raptors? In certain light, you may lose the colors and be left with a black and white palette. Plates like this one from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors train you to recognize patterns and shadings in any light.

Black and white! In the field, birds are seen in various lighting situations, and often they can appear colorless. This is especially true against a white sky or when backlit. Even the shapes of birds can appear to change lightly in various situations, so practicing watching hawks in situations other than blue skies will prove useful. Take a stab at these black-and-white images…but notice how nearly all the ID traits are still visible. Learning to see birds as a pattern in shades of gray will make you a much better field birder.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

The Crossley ID Guide series is one of the most innovative and exciting contributions to bird books in recent memory. When the Eastern Birds book was launched in spring 2011, it quickly rose to prominence and became a must-have item on any serious birder’s shelf. With the release of volume 2 in the series — The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors — almost upon us, we are in a celebrating kind of mood. And the best way we came up with to celebrate is by giving stuff away.

We are thrilled to offer two free eBooks in the signature style of The Crossley ID Guide series. They are in a PDF format, so you can download them to any internet-enabled device — computers, tablets, phones. Simply right click on the links below and choose “Save as…” These files are clickable, emailable, shareable. They are the perfect introduction to The Crossley ID Guide series and are in and of themselves useful tools for any bird watcher.

So what is in these eBooks?

The Top 25 Garden Feeder Birds in North AmericaThis eBook contains plates for the top 25 most common visitors to garden feeders in North America, according to data from eBird/Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This eBook is particularly useful for teachers and students exploring birds in the backyard or for anyone curious about their most common backyard friends.Click here to download The Top 25 Garden Feeder Birds in North America!

If you choose the Raptors eBook, you are getting over a dozen panoramic vistas of raptors drawn from the selection found in The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors.Click here to download the Raptors eBook!

Disclaimer: These PDFs may not display correctly in all internet browsers. They render best in Adobe products, Internet Explorer, and Safari. We don’t recommend using Firefox’s Integrated PDF plug-in. If you are seeing something like the picture on the left, then the PDF is not displaying properly and you should reopen it with another program. The picture on the right shows what the PDF should look like.

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This straight-forward plate from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors reveals the identifying features of turkey vultures found in Western North America.

Occurs in any habitat, but favors woodland and cliffs for nesting. Highly aerial and social, soars in large “kettles,” rising and spinning tornado-like on the horizon, and gathers in numbers at kills, during migration, and at roosts. Eats primarily carrion detected mainly by smell. Frequently scavenges along roadsides, attending roadkills with Black Vulture and Crested Caracara. Tears prey with powerful bill, but has relatively weak feet, unlike stronger talons of raptors. The “Turkey Buzzard” leaves its prey reluctantly and rarely retreats far. Often perches on dead snags, radio towers, and utility poles, and frequently holds wings outstretched to help condition flight feathers and increase body temperature (lowering it at night to conserve energy).

Partly migratory, mostly retracts from the northern parts of range in winter, especially the Great Basin and northern Great Plains, but has been found in recent years with increasing regularity farther north than usual. Eastern birds average slightly larger and usually have more prominent “tubercules” (colorful, wartlike protuberances near the eyes) on the face than Western birds, but some birds appear intermediate.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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Can you identify the species, age, and sex of the South Texas falcons in this mystery quiz plate from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors? Here’s some advice from the authors:

Focus on size, shape, and broad patterns of plumage. Kestrels are slim and rufous overall, whereas Merlins are compact and dark. Aplomado is elegant, long-winged, and dark-backed, with a striking head pattern. Peregrine is grayish and heavily built, looking much bigger and sturdier than any of the other falcons on this plate.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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Here we have a glimpse of turkey vultures and black vultures from the top of the Cape May Lighthouse, Cape May, NJ. This double page spread from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors is actually a mystery quiz page where you can pick out the different vultures and test your identification skills up close and far away. Think you can do it? Here’s some tips from the authors:

On migration, Turkey and Black Vultures are often seen together in many parts of the East and in some portions of the Southwest. Black Vultures are smaller in size with shorter wings and especially shorter tails. They also have whitish outer primaries that Turkey Vultures lack. However, ideal views are not always the norm when watching birds on migration, and other clues are needed for identification. Turkey Vulture often displays an exaggerated “wobbly” flight and holds its wings in a steeper dihedral than Black Vulture, but the most significant flight style difference is the hurried, snappy wingbeats of Black Vulture compared with the lazy, floppy wingbeats of Turkey Vulture.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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This double-page spread of Swainson’s Hawks from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors captures the variable plumage you might see among a large mid-migration group.

Swainson’s Hawks have one of the most spectacular migrations of any raptor, with some birds migrating from the northern Great Plains to the grasslands of Argentina. En route, they form large flocks, passing over the Great Plains in big groups and over hawk watches such as Corpus Christi and sites in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The biggest flights pass through Veracruz, MX, and Panama, where birds are funneled into a narrow bottleneck before continuing south into South America.

Swainson’s Hawks have the most variable plumage of any buteo, with perhaps the exception of Red-tailed Hawk, but the good thing about Swainson’s is that all birds can be identified by the same suite of few characters: long tapered wings, with dark flight feathers, usually paler underwing coverts, and almost always pale undertail coverts. The upperparts, wing, and tail feathers of all variants are similar in appearance, so focus on the body and underwing coverts to get a sense of the variation of Swainson’s.

In the book, this is one of the mystery quiz pages where each bird is numbered and the solutions are given at the back of the book. One more thing to look forward to!

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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This gorgeous plate of the Swallow-tailed Kite from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors shows the bird from every angle.

Many agree that the Swallow-tailed Kite is the most graceful bird on the planet. Its flight is buoyant, maneuverable, elegant, floating…mesmerizing. The shape of the Swallow-tailed Kite is a fitting profile: long, curved, pointed wings and an extremely long, forked tail that flutters behind.

Swallow-tailed Kites feed on small prey such as dragonflies and lizards that they snatch from the tree canopy, and their small feet are evidence of this. They twist and turn in chase of their prey, and often eat on the wing.

They arrive back from their wintering grounds as early as late February and depart south again around August. Some overshoot in spring can be seen by lucky observers in the northeast.

Swallow-tailed Kites sometimes feed high in the sky in small groups but are more often not much above the treeline, and they have a sneaky habit of disappearing out of view way too quickly.

All ages are pure white underneath with black flight and tail feathers, but juveniles just out of the nest have rufous breasts that quickly turn white. They are gray on top with a black tail and black “shoulders.” 1st years are nearly identical to adults, but the tail is slightly shorter.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.

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This two-page spread of a Snail Kite snatching up a meal is from The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors.

Snail Kites are scarce and local in central Florida wherever there is a plentiful supply of apple snails. They can be seen gracefully quartering reed beds, somewhat harrier-like. With talons and a bill designed to do maximum damage, they pluck the snails from the surface and usually disappear to a favorite post or branch to eat.

To see ALL the sample plates from The Crossley ID Guide, click here.