The data quality assessment is a summary of an observation's accuracy. All
observations start as "casual" grade, and achieve
"research" grade when
-
the iNat community agrees with the observer's ID, where an "agreeing"
identification is one that matches exactly or is of a child taxon of the
observer's ID. For example, if Scott says it's a mammal and Ken-ichi
says it's Homo sapiens, then Ken-ichi agrees with Scott.
- the observation has a date
- the observation is georeferenced (i.e. has lat/lon coordinates)
- the observation has a photo
Observations will revert to "casual" grade if the above conditions aren't met or
- the community agrees the location doesn't looks accurate (e.g. monkeys in the middle of the
Comments & Identifications
Oh no, I didn't even know there was a dark morph! Is there a good way to tell them apart from dark morph red tails if they're perched like this?
Ferruginous Hawks have a larger beak with a noticeable yellow gape. I realize this feature is obscured in my photo by the power line. The really helpful thing you need for identification is to make sure you bring along someone who knows hawks. I had Clay Kempf along to make sure I didn't call this a Red-tail. Clay mentioned other features that can help identify this bird, but the gape was what stood out to me. When the bird flew, you could see that its proportions were very different from a Red-tail. I just searched and found some good photos of dark morph Ferruginous Hawks showing the yellow gape, including a photo by Clay at http://www.pbase.com/ternvomitthief/recent_photos&page=3
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