Dear Nick,
Thanks so much for doing this. I learnt two things from your exercise.
Firstly that it is certainly not a dark phase! Secondly that a digital
image contains more info than we give credit for even when it looks
black.

I was floored by the all red unmarked tail, if ever a feature should
be apparent when the bird is soaring  that should have been it. I was
so surprised by your image that I tried the experiment again myself,
lightening then saturating and repeating the process, and I finished
up with an image identical to yours.  Four of us were looking at what
we thought was an all blackish bird. I am sure I looked at it through
binoculars before trying to photograph and video it. Whatever happened
to the dark tail with a black terminal, it just disappeared when the
image was lightened with not even a suggestion of a band, all very
odd.

Best for now
Brian


On 2/18/14, fanatic4falcons@yahoo.com <fanatic4falcons@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>  It appears that your camera's exposure meter was fooled by the bright sky
> background, resulting in a 2+ stop underexposure of the underside of the
> raptor.  Brightening the images (attached) better shows the true markings on
> the bird but I can't see any sign of a dark sub-terminal band on the tail.
>
>
>  Best regards,
>
>
>  Nick
>
>