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Project Noah Nature School
Accipiter striatus
Sharp-shinned Hawks are small, long-tailed hawks with short, rounded wings. They have small heads that in flight do not always project beyond the “wrists” of the wings. The tail tends to be square-tipped and may show a notch at the tip. Females are considerably larger than males. Adults are slaty blue-gray above, with narrow, horizontal red-orange bars on the breast. Immature birds are mostly brown, with coarse vertical streaks on white underparts. Adults and young have broad dark bands across their long tails.
On the fence outside the kitchen window. It had a couple of sparrows trapped in the shrubs below. Sat for quite some time and made a couple of unsuccessful dives. Finally flew off to hide in the trees across the yard.
Spotted on Feb 18, 2013
Submitted on Feb 19, 2013
14 Comments
great spot. Will study it carefully to help me differentiate a Coopers.
Location does make spotting easy - that is when ID is not confusing :)
WOW! Your backyard. Awesome!
Thanks jellis and Karen. I think we have this one sorted finally. :)
Notched tail... smaller head. Yep, sharpie. Mom and I are trying to get the nerve to tell her neighbor that "her" Cooper's hawks are Sharpies - LOL... you'd have to know this woman to understand
We have both in our area and I always worry I will mix them up. So far I haven't photographed a SS yet.
Jellis here is what I found. On a closer look at both spottings opposite legs are hurt. This one the right, the other spotting is the left.. Odd but true. With that knowledge, I excluded all photo information from the previous spotting. Using just what I shot for this one the markers come down to 49% Cooper's 51% Sharp-shinned. Markers being bird size, head shape & size, light grey nape neck, eye color & placement, beak, tail shape and white tip length, legs skinny or thick. I had to ignore the body shape because this bird was puffing out its upper body to prepare dive down most of the time, making its shape broad at the top then not broad at the top. Finally I agreed with a sharp-shinned based on one photo that shows the underside of the tail with the feathers appearing to be the same length. It may be that they are growing in, but this was the one extra marker on the side of a sharp-shinned, which are much rarer in my area. I am removing photo 3 and adding the photo of the undertail :)
Will take another close look at all the photos I took and compare them to the earlier spotting. Thanks again :)
Thanks The things I noticed is the shape of the body, the size of the head and the tail on this bird are all the same length and on the other bird they are different length. Plus if you look at a close up at the face look at the eyes and beak.
Thanks EnvUnlimited. It was a good way to start the day. :)
Thanks Jellis for your help. I use and recommend the same comparison site for differences to help ID. I am pretty sure this one is a Cooper's. Here is a spotting from last week that shows a better tail shot and the same foot being favored.
PN http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/180...
Last week it was not using the foot at all, now it is, so getting better. We do have Sharp-shinned here in the winter, and I occasionally see them. The Cooper's is here year round. :)
That looks more like a Sharp-shinned Hawk. But since you can see the bird better this might help to tell them apart.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/AboutBi...
Thank you Lindsy :)
Great series! Beautiful bird.