Pretty sure this Accipter is a Cooper’s Hawk, though they are notoriously difficult to tell apart from a Sharp-shinned Hawks.

It was perched in backyard trees keeping a hawk-eye on the bird feeders. I had to look hard for it but I thought there was a hawk because I heard some chickadees making hysterical alarm calls, looked and saw no birds at the feeders except one downy woodpecker motionless and clinging to the side of the platform feeder.

Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous lifestyle. In a study of more than 300 Cooper’s hawk skeletons, 23 percent showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula, or wishbone.

Pretty bird. Loved to look at Hawks, while at the same time feeling like guarding my smaller feathered feeder visitors from them. Go eat a squirrel!