Posting a Hybrid California Red-shouldered Hawk X Common Black Hawk

General
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I’m unsure of how to post a Hybrid raptor? It’s an offdpring of a Common Black Hawk X California Red-shouldered Hawk. Photos included in the observation.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106635936.
Hope I can get some help in here.
Thanks, wild-by-nature-db.
eBird shows Common Black x Red-shouldered Hawk hybrid.

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The ID would have to remain at the lowest taxonomic level shared by the parental species (some common hybrids have names in iNaturalist but I’m guessing this one doesn’t).

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Welcome to the forum, @wild-by-nature-db ! It has been a topic of discussion here before that until curators add something to the taxonomy, it can only be IDed as the closest higher taxon. Many rare hybrids are not in the taxonomy. So the best one can do for now is ID to genus and leave a comment explaining the hybrid, and then flag it for curation asking that the hybrid be added to the taxonomy.

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Since this is an intergeneric hybrid, the best thing to do would be to leave the ID at Accipitridae

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Good point. I forgot black hawks are not Buteo.

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I’ve flagged for the taxon to be added.

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Probably need to ask bird curator, as there’re so many hybrid flags added for many months and years and they’re still not on website.

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I don’t expect anything to happen for years, but I figured I’d flag it anyway.

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This has been a problem on iNat for years. A couple years ago one of the Aves curators tried to fix the issue by adding several missing avian hybrids – those taxa were quickly inactivated. Observations of hybrids that do not have an iNat taxon are quickly lost in the sea of Needs-ID observations, and being at genus-level or above, the observations are very difficult to find. It is what it is.

I’ve just created the Hybrids without iNat Taxa Project to collect observations of definite hybrids that do not have iNat taxa yet. If anyone wants to help out, DM me and I’ll make you a project curator.

@wild-by-nature-db I’ve added your observation as the 1st addition in the project. If CBHA x RSHA is ever added to iNat as a taxon, users can easily find the observation and add the ID, rather than it being lost amongst the 31,505 other ‘Needs ID’ Accipitridae observations on iNat.

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