I have always gotten confused between young red-shouldered hawks and young Cooper's hawks. I'm sure there are some easy things to distinguish them. If you have time, a comparison video between the two would be awesome.
Just discovered a few of these live in my neighborhood. They’ve been fighting with the local murder of crows that I feed and I feel bad the crows might get bigger and stronger and overpower the hawks. They’re really cool to watch!
In the perched juv red-shouldered vs broad-winged you neglected to mention the most useful difference. Notice the pattern in the wing feathers, particularly the secondaries. In shoulders there is the same light & dark pattern in shades of gray that adults show in black & white. In broadies the wing feathers are solid-colored with just a very thin light edging. This is foolproof.
I was hoping you might talk about the flying patterns of these two species. I know Redtails have a distnictive flap flap glide pattern, but don't know how Red -shoulders fly.
Red-shoulders flap a bit more and will throw small flaps in in the middle of soaring. The flapping of red-shoulders is a bit more loose and weaker looking. Red-tails have a stiffer flap.
