Monday 4 January 2021

Coopers or sharp-shinned?

 We had a visitor at the bird feeder. I was sitting in my lazy boy chair, and I looked up and out the window. There it was. I think I did a sort of double take. "OMG, a hawk!" 

Let me crop that for you!


Question is, is it a Sharp-shinned or a Cooper's hawk? <= this site provides some clues. 

That written, I still don't know! We had a Cooper's here before, confirmed by Gilligalou. 

Then, there was this one, a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk, on a cold afternoon. It was April, 2015. [Critters abound: hawk on the bird feeder!]
This is our sharp-shinned hawk.

This one hit the window, self-inflicted chasing a bird! It recovered, as Hooper watched over it. [Tornados, Cardinals, Butch, and a hawk!]

I got up, and went to the other window. By the time I remembered, on my new videocamera, that I had to manually open the lens cap, it was in flight. Hawk jan 2 

11 comments:

Anvilcloud said...

What a nice serendipitous sighting for you.

Christine said...

Great you caught the hawk in flight.

Olga said...

It's a very handsome bird which ever it is.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
That take off flight at the very end of the vid shows the bird to be pretty large - which favours a diagnosis of Coopers!!! YAM xx

eileeninmd said...

Great photo of the Hawk! I think the size is a big difference, the Cooper's is 5 inch larger than the Sharp-shinned. Take care, I wish you a happy new week!

RedPat said...

I'm not good with hawk ID. I might vote for a Cooper though.

Tom said...

...and I wouldn't know the difference.

Red said...

Coopers for sure.

Handmade in Israel said...

What a fabulous visitor and you got a great photo too!

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

My latest has a pic of what I think was a Cooper’s Hawk, juvenile. I don’t have anybody to ask IRL, so I read and looked at Internet pictures. It had a yellow eye. One site said juveniles Coopers did.

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

PS ...my pictures aren’t anywhere near as good as yours.