Paul--

   Thanks for the great information. I also posed this question to the ID-Frontiers email list. Based on those responses, it appears that the best we can say is that this matches the expectations for a western (calurus) Red-tailed Hawk, but it perhaps isn't possible to entirely eliminate the possibility of a dark morph among albieticola. However, it seems more likely that this is a member of the western subspecies (Wheeler cites 17 records for Ohio, I believe), which is how I've reported it to eBird.

The full thread from ID-Frontiers is available here:
http://birding.aba.org/maillist/IDF

I've seen this bird on the way home every day since Tuesday, I wish it was in a more accessible location. I want to again acknowledge my wife Dimi for being the first to spot this bird and point it out to me.

Blake Mathys
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http://blakemathys.com/
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