Touchdown

I'm going with RedTail Hawk, for obvious reasons. But I'm confused about the rest of him. After reading many bird descriptions, I looked carefully over all the photos and made note of things that apparently are important markers. In the Extra you can see his soft grey front feathers, just kissed with burnt orange. And his yellow gape, a new word for me!--the thin line that looks like a smile and ends under his eye. I think it is a large gape. And there is a yellow sort of nostril, which may or may not be called a cere, over the white beak. He has lovely brown eyes and yellow feet. Most of these characteristics do not apply to a red tail hawk. Then there are morphs, which I think refers to a broad spectrum of color possibilities. This is a dark morph. 

The sky appears as a lovely bright blue, but the air quality here is still very poor and unhealthy from the smoke blowing in from the fires 200 miles away. I wore a mask again this morning for our walk along the ocean, and stayed in for the rest of the day. It's very strange to spend so much time indoors.