This might be a difference in local names, but that looks more what we in the southern US would call a dark-morph short-tailed hawk (buteo brachyurus) vs a white-tailed hawk (buteo albicaudatus).
Hi Issac,
At first i was not sure about the ID.
This image was made near by a nest site were this bird was with a "normal" Buteo albicaudatus and had a chick in the nest, i also e-mailed the image to a few ornithologist here in Brasil and they all agreed on the ID.
I'm not an expert, so I will differ to the local ones. Also, the fact that it was mated with a white-tailed hawk makes its identity fairly clear. The two are fairly different in size (akin to the difference in between Red-shouldered and a Red-Tailed hawks), but size is deceiving in flight photos. The overall wing shape in your photo suggested short-tailed to me, as well as the fact that dark morphs are common. I didn't know that white-tailed hawks had a dark morph.
This is a new one for me too, never seen (or heard) of a dark morph White-tailed Hawk. So I looked in the Handbook of Birds of the World and the first sentence under Descriptive notes "Polymorphic, with pale and dark morphs."
Is it possible that it is a partial leucistic hawk? I know there are leucistic red tail hawks. Here is one page that shows some and there are many more if you Google it.
White Tailed Hawk Dark morph
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