Hi Steve All the advise above sound pretty good. Molting is a good possibility. Also were you there when he caught them. We use a leg catch for our chickens and turkeys when we catch them to sell but the Guineas are a different story. Feathers get left behind every time with them. Another thought besides the molting. possibly lice came with them. Try some Sevin dust especially if there is a lot of the vent and tail fluff showing. If itÂs the actual tail feathers it can still be lice. ItÂs probably pretty cold in NJ and the Rhodes are a heavy bird that will fluctuate a lot in the winter but will continue to lay. After the girls are settled in if they still arenÂt laying as much as you think they should (and remember they will back off substantially in the winter) then try some red pepper flakes sprinkled free choice on their feed ration. It gets the blood moving and warms them up and also helps with internal parasites. Hope you have buyers lined up for the Spring. Mike

Tammy - they calm down in a few days and get very fixated on you, hovering all around while you mix up their food. If they are injured and cannot fly they sit and chatter at you - but you usually can't set them on your finger because its too big, you have to use a toothpick or skewer so that they can grip. But they get really tame, just unafraid of anything - which is not like any other song bird, everything scares the cr@p out of them! The main problem is their metabolism - its been years since I worked with them, so things may have changed - but they need to eat like so many calories every 30 minutes. If you can't get them to eat you have to cool them down and keep them in the dark so that they will shut down otherwise they exhaust themselves and you'll never get them to recover. Hardly anyone raises orphaned chicks, its next to impossible to get to them in time should something happen to their parents. Most often they are window-banged, minor-damage victims and all they need is peace and quiet away from predators for a day or so before they get released. Though it is called the Migratory Bird Act it protects all native birds including the ones that don't migrate. The only wild birds in this area that are removed from this protection are European Starlings (what most people call Starlings) and Rock Doves (what most people call pigeons). There are jewelry makers and craftsmen that use fancy feathers in their artwork, most often they buy feathers that are specially bred from hybrids of wild birds (like mixing a Blue Jay with a Scrub Jay, you get nice blue feathers from a bird that does not exist in the wild, therefore it is immune to protective laws - except anti cruelty laws). This is how a lot of falconers get away with owning hawks and falcons - they buy hybrids instead of true species. Even in these situations it is best to keep all documentation handy to show the authorities because they tend to confiscate first and check the facts second. In most cases that an official discovers your collection of songbird feathers they just threaten you with a steep fine and take all your feathers away and dispose of them. The people that usually get into real trouble are the people that are selling feathers or something with feathers on it (like artwork).

I have a red headed parrot. He is very noisy. Don't you want the whole thing? There are days when I would pay someone to take him. Then I ask him if he wants to go out and play with the neighbors cat. He never goes! Funny about that but he knows what "cat" is and yells when he sees the cat in the yard. Oh well, Guess I'll keep him. BB

The only thing with Crossley's Raptor guide is that, for relative beginners, it's photograph overload. Turn to any particular page and one could quickly feel overwhelmed by intricate plumage differences that ultimately jumble together to form one big complex hawk in your memory. Kind of like a library without a card catalog. There's very little you can do other than commit some field marks, flight styles, and behavior to memory. Or, just get good pictures and ask me. :-) Although there are times I have trouble IDing a hawk myself. Depends on how good of a look I can get. I think what else may be helpful is to always know what you might be likely to see in your area. In CT, your Red-taileds are going to be easterns. They pretty much all look the same. You probably have many year-round Red-tailed residents and the guy you photographed up there probably has a mate on a nest right now. A nesting (adult) pair of Red-taileds have the rufous tails. A juvenile (last year's brood) bird will lack a rufous tail and will show brown and white tail bands instead. A clean, lightly marked underside is more indicative of an adult- juvies have more brown markings and look streaky underneath. Some adults are heavily marked too though! Adult Red-taileds will also show a thin dark rim around the back of the underwing. You can see that on the bird you photographed. I recommend Dunne/Sibley/Sutton 'Hawks in Flight, 2nd Edition'. I have to say that I bought the Crossley guide for pleasure rather than purpose. I love the photos! But when I first sat down with it, I could already score very high on the "quizzes" he embedded within it. So, I learned my skills elsewhere. Hawks in Flight was a huge help with that.