Cooper’s Hawk in the neighborhood.
We were out for a walk with the dog and this hawk flew across the street in front of us. Long tail and size gave it away as a Cooper’s Hawk. Looks like an immature one based these photos at Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Cooper’s Hawk Identification.
No way I would have noticed this hawk sitting perfectly still in the greenery if it had not just flown in front of my car before landing there.
Love the fierce eye.
We were looking at people’s landscapes on Harbor Point Road in the Snug Harbor area of Stuart yesterday because we are working on our own landscape now and trying to get ideas.
I stopped the car and shot a few pics out the window. Husband John kept an eye out for traffic. I happened to have my superzoom bird camera with me, though I’ve been lazy about that lately, this long, hot, hurricane-filled summer-into-fall.
I think this is a young Cooper’s Hawk.
Among the bird world’s most skillful fliers, Cooper’s Hawks are common woodland hawks that tear through cluttered tree canopies in high speed pursuit of other birds. You’re most likely to see one prowling above a forest edge or field using just a few stiff wingbeats followed by a glide.
Don’t you feel the day is special somehow when you see a hawk?
A couple of weeks ago I stopped by the Snowy Owl’s favorite place. No owl, but on the way out of the park I spotted this bird…
Cooper’s Hawk on a telephone wire, standing on one foot and keeping the other warm on a chilly day.
Fluffy accipiter.
Bet he didn’t know he was in Snowy Owl territory!
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!
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