Did you identify last week’s puzzler as a Sharp-Shinned Hawk? Or perhaps you thought it was a Cooper’s Hawk? Both are what birder’s call accipiters, which are a group of long-tailed woodland hawks with short, rounded wings. These hawks typically fly in a pattern of flap, flap, glide, flap, flap, glide.
Sharp-Shinned and Cooper’s Hawks are very similar and are difficult to tell apart, as their body markings are the same. They both have a dark back, and a rusty-barred chest. Both have long tails with several rows of alternating white with gray stripes. Sharp-Shinned Hawks are smaller, about 10-14 inches long, whereas Cooper’s Hawks are 14-20 inches long. Of course as anyone who has ever watched a bird soaring in the sky can tell you though, it is very difficult to determine size with a blue background and nothing for reference. When high above you, it’s hard to say whether the bird is the size of a Blue Jay, or a bit bigger.
The difference in identifying these two hawks lies in whether the tail is square or rounded. Sharp-Shinned Hawks have square tails. Cooper’s Hawks have rounded tails.
So knowing that and then looking at the photo, it seems both photos show a squared off tail rather than a round tail, making last week’s puzzler a Sharp-Shinned Hawk. But give yourself credit if you were able to narrow it down to one of these two! Admittedly it was a difficult question.
Here are a few more examples, this first one is from a Cooper’s Hawk; Notice how rounded the tail is. (By the way, it is sometimes hard to remember the two hawks and which is which. What I do to help is remember that Cooper’s Hawk has a rounded tail, like the two O’s in Cooper’s.)
Here is a Cooper’s Hawk sitting outside my window in the winter. (Probably wanting to eat one of my songbirds feeding at the bird feeder.) You can sort-of see the rounded tail.
Here is a Sharp-Shinned Hawk outside of the same window at a different time. Notice the square tail.
Okay, well now that you can identify those two accipiters, let’s do one more. Check out my next puzzler, #207.