Subject: Our cooper's hawk near Granite Falls got a varied thrush! f
Date: Mar 18 10:08:41 2001
From: brotep - brotep at whidbey.net


I haven't a clue what kind of cooper's hawk we saw here at our feeder, but I spotted it after it had already taken a varied thrush. Actually I didn't so much as see it doing the killing as I heard the other birds distress calls and looked to see what was going on. It took the hawk awhile to kill the bird totally, drag the thrush under the fence around the feeder, and then fly away with it. My husband was itching to follow the hawk to see where he would take his kill, but the hawk flew away while my husband was getting his scope from the other room.

WE are in the middle between Arlington and Granite Falls. In our five and a half years at this location this was the first time we more or less witnessed a kill. It took awhile, but the siskins and everyone else (juncos, thrush, finches etc ) came back to the feeder. Very exciting.

Also fun is watching the Pileated woodpecker working at the large snags we have . He was probably less than 50 feet from our kitchen window. The best indoor view of him yet. It makes the money we paid the tree climber to cut it way up high in the tree seem worth the cost!!

----- Original Message -----
From: Jack Kintner
To: Steve.Aubert at METROKC.GOV
Cc: Tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 6:44 PM
Subject: Re: An interesting weekend in backyard Monroe, WA


You're very fortunate to have a hawk in your yard, and to be able to see it make a kill is quite unusual. A batting average of .200 is considered good.

We have an immature female cooper's hawk as a regular visitor and feeder upon our many visiting pine siskins. We named it Alice before having read Dan O'Brien's Equinox. They seem to be increasing in our area (NW Whatcom County). There is a nesting pair now in Cornwall Park in Bellingham.

In our experience with Accipiters (from a Latin root meaning "to take unto one's self," as in shoplift or swipe), the question of sex is easier to answer if you first confirm the species.

Hope that isn't an insult, but it's a method that has worked well for us because the sizes overlap, that is, the females are larger in both, and the female sharpie can be bigger than the male cooper's. A male sharpie is tiny; Bud Anderson has a slide of one perched comfortably with both feet outside the last knuckle on his index finger. A female Cooper's can be bigger than a crow, esp. our crows.

So, which species do you have? These two are quite similar. Perching out on a rail or post is a cooper's habit. Sharpies tend to stick to trees. If you get a good look again, look at the leg thickness (cooper's are the size of a pencil, sharpies' legs are thinner and more delicate). Also, cooper's have an obvious break in the color between the top of the head and the back, as if they're wearing a cap, cooper's cap. Sharpies are smooth from head to back in color, sharpie smooth. Cooper's have a definite notch at the cere (e.g. base of the beak & forehead make a notch) but sharpies are, again, smooth, having a much smoother line from the beak of the top of their heads. Cooper's has a tail in which the black bands sometimes look a little askew, and the white band on the aft (distal) edge is quite a bit wider than on the sharpie, whose tail bands look more neatly aligned and whose white tail band is limited to just the edge. We always look for the "cap" and have found it to be a reliable tip-off.

Also, if it doesn't gross you out to do this, surf a little on some of the internet "Falconry" pages and look at some of the beautiful and very close, detailed photo's they have of all kinds of raptors. It gives you a good look at some interesting detail.

Then, the size will tell you the sex. If it's big, it's a female. What "big" really means is a lot easier to judge once you have a species: Roughly (check your bird book), a male sharpie is really little, close to a robin. A female is closer to a pigeon. A male cooper's is about the same size, give or take, and a female cooper's is the size of a crow.

Enjoy the air show!



Jack Kintner kintner at nas.com Blaine


Lately we have a new visitor, a SHARP SHINNED HAWK, who I've come to think of as the neighborhood assassin. It has been a passing visitor for about three months that we have noticed but this weekend he seems to have moved in permanently. I say he with reservations. Despite several close looks with time to compare the view in the binocs to Sibley we got as far as an adult bird. Have not a clue how to sex it. Any help there would be appreciated. Anyway, Saturday morning we had the usual 30+ grosbeeks feeding and then roosting in the leafless alders at the back of the property. Something came in very quickly and made a couple of fast circles around the roost trees and then snatched a grosbeak which was slow to take off. Our assassin was making himself at home. (I say assassin in a joking way. He is doing what mother nature designed him to do. Thinning out the weaklings and keeping the local population healthy and on it's toes.) About an hour later this bird actually lit on the rail around the back deck under the Siskin feeders. This put it about ten feet from where I was sitting. I sat very still and was rewarded with about three minutes of close up viewing. It then went to the edge of the property where it maintained a vigil over the yard feeders and the local runoff pond behind the property. We get a few mallards and some Canada's down there. Three hours later it again appeared on the deck inspecting something on a piece of ground which I could not see. It finally hopped down and grabbed an apparently dead grosbeak which I had not seen and departed. This bird was seen in various observations points around the area the rest of the weekend. I'm curious to see how it's presence changes the feeding habits of the local birds.