COMMENTS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE FUERTES RED-TAILED HAWK ON THE SOUTHERN GREAT PLAINS

摘要

Geographic variation in the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) has been described in numerous ornithological works (Taverner 1927, Friedmann 1950, Brown and Ama-don 1968, Palmer 1988). Although generalized breeding ranges of the seven subspecies (oneof which, the kriderii, is no longer considered a valid subspecies) found north of Mexico have been reported, exact delineation of their breeding ranges, at least for some subspecies, is uncertain. This uncertainty is due to the high degree of plumage variation in some subspecies, the existence of zones of in-tergradation, a paucity of museum specimens of breeding adults, and primarily, by a dearth of fieldwork over wide areas of this species' distribution.