Hangin’ with Mrs. Cooper

My not-so-little friend is back and this time she sat on my birdbath long enough for me to sneak outside and get within 15 feet of her with my camera. I got some shots at different angles this time so I could verify that she is indeed a Cooper’s Hawk.

In the last few weeks I’ve learned that hawks can be incredibly difficult to identify, especially Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks. They are almost identical, especially this time of year when there are many immature birds. One thing I know for sure is that I have an immature hawk because she has yellow eyes. Adult Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks have red eyes.

I pored over bird books and compared dozens of images online and still wasn’t 100 percent sure which species was sitting calmly on my birdbath. Then I found a description in one of my favorite new bird books, Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges. According to the book, male Sharp-shinned hawks are about the size of a jay and females are a half-size larger. Male Cooper’s Hawks are slightly bigger than that, and female Cooper’s Hawks are the size of a Red-shouldered Hawk. Quite frankly, I don’t know anything about Red-shouldered Hawks, but my hawk is HUGE—at least 3 or 4 Blue Jay’s worth, so based on that size scale, she has to be a female Cooper’s Hawk.

The book also mentions that it’s rare to get the opportunity to see a hawk close up. I don’t seem to be having that problem at the moment. I know when she’s around because the birds scatter instantly and the squirrels run up my apple tree and become motionless. The only birds that seem oblivious are the Red-breasted Nuthatches. They continue to fly back and forth to my peanut feeder like everything is normal.

Cooper’s Hawks love to eat bigger birds. Their favorite is the Mourning Dove. I have a flock of at least 7 birds that visits my feeders regularly. They’d better keep an eye to the sky (or perhaps the birdbath), or they may soon become someone’s lunch!