Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I guess most of you were probably expecting a dinosaur. Sorry! I was headed out yesterday, opened the garage door and was surprised to see this Cooper's Hawk perched on my neighbors bird bath. I snapped a few quick photos but sadly it flew away before I could get a nice close up shot.

I'm entitling the photo "Song birds, bathe at your own risk"

Great looking photo of a very noble hawk!

That's a very fitting title as well..HAHA!!!..

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

"some are just born to troll and roll"

A majestc bird!

Thanks for the pic.

>>A majestc bird!
>>
>>Thanks for the pic.

Yes, I lide the picture too! I see Bald Eagle occassionally here near my home, those things are so huge. I am alwasy awed by them!
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Disclaimer: I do keep several snakes in pairs, and some in groups. However I realize that things can go wrong, and I have to keep a close eye on those groups, to be sure they are not being adversely affected by these living conditions. Also if one happens to eat it's cagemate, it is 100% my fault, and I know the risks in advance!

What's wrong with using CAUTION?!?!?!
King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
~ Jorge Sierra www.SierraSnakes.com

Gorgeous AND, like you said, majestic bird!!!!! Great shot!!

Thanks for sharing!
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Genesis 1:1

Very cool. I rarely see birds like that here in the city.
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Beautiful! Probably puts the kebosh on any other birds using that bird bath! LOL!

A mama hawk with fledgling babies used to attack me every time I passed through her nesting area on the trail to the river. She would actually brush my hair with her talons and then scream at me. I took to covering my head with a peice of cardboard as defence.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Yeah I'm hoping it doesn't have the neighborhood cardinals for lunch. Hopefully it will be satisfied with morning doves.

Simply beautiful. I actually, probably like some others here, LOVE birds, with raptors being my favorites. If I was not into snakes so much I would be one big birding nerd!

I once attended a talk by a well known herper and he said, its a natural progression for herpers to morph into bird watchers. hahahahahahahahaha They are closely related yes?

I too am a fan of raptors and did learn falconry and fly birds for a while. Only thing that ever took me away from herps.

This is a fairly uncommon raptor around here. Sorry for the bad pic, it would not let me get close enough.

That is bad arse FR. As much as I love them both, I have to admit, it still makes me cringe when I see one flying with a snake haning in it's talons. LOL.

Joe

I think its great, but then we have tons of snakes around here. I did see a redtail pickup a baby pit earlier this year.

And once on the way to the study site I had a golden take a large pit in front of my car. It was outa hand, the golden landed about ten feet in front of the snake then ran up and simply grabbed it and off it went.

On the otherhand, it a hawk took a snake off my property, all hell would break loose. hahahahahahahaha

ALso I have a pieballed whitewing dove that nests on my property and coopers hawks, that worries me. hahahahahahahaha I have pics of that if you want to see it. Cheers

Any pics of raptors are awesome to see.

Joe

I love CaraCaras. They have expanded their range quite a bit form south Texas and now live and breed in my area of far southeast Texas and even into SW Louisiana.
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Greg Jackson

Great shot. It's always cool to get such a close view of a raptor. How close were you when you took the photo?
I think it's actually a Sharp-Shinned Hawk although there isn't a great deal of difference. Sharp-Shinned Hawks have a smaller head than the Cooper's Hawk, like the one in your photo. Cooper's also have a darker blackish crown which stands out more from the grey on the back of the neck than it does on the Sharp-Shinned. Sharp-Shinned Hawks tail has the thinner white strip at the tip of their tail like the one in your picture and they also a more square tail tip than the Cooper's which is hard to see from the angle of the photo.
Again, great shot. We saw a Cooper's in the field this morning but I haven't seen a Sharp-Shinned in a while.
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Randy Whittington

I was about 15 yards away. I had a 70-200 mm lens attached to my camera.

You might be right, I found this photo which compares the two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Accipiter_cooperii_striatusDO1908P0203A.jpg

Sharpies are about the size of a Krestle falcon, much smaller then a coop, which is much smaller then a Gos. Cheers

Thats without question a coop, sharpies are much smaller. Both have a range of outfits as they age. Sharpies also have a very distintive call. But I can't hear that picture, hahahahahaha

I think your wrong Frank. The bigger sharp-shinned's size stops where the cooper's begin so without seeing it personally you are simply guessing on size. If your really familiar with their field markings and difference in head sizes compared to their bodies, everything about the one in his picture shows it to be a sharp-shinned.
Aso sharp-shinned's are not the size of a kestrel. The smallest sharp-shinned are about the size of the largest kestrel you will ever see.
I'm familiar with the call of all three but we can't hear it here to help identify it obviously.
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Randy Whittington

I would like to see it flying overhead, see it's size in person and hear it call. Notice the no neck shape with it's small head. I've been wrong before but I'm sticking with sharp-shinned.

We got about 50 ft away before spooking a great horned owl out of a tree yesterday morning about 7:15am. That was cool. Looks like a beagle flying out of a tree, only grey. lol
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Randy Whittington

Randy, several years ago I was deer hunting and had on a full leafy suit, including the headnet with only eye holes. A huge owl flew right toward me and I stood up and waved my arms at him/her in fear. LOL. The thing swerved away but I can only imagine it just saw my eyes blinking and nothing else and was coming in for attack!! I have seen numerous rators up close while hunting and having them land in trees next to me or above me. Very cool. Turkey, blue birds, pileated (spelling) woodpeckers, ect. This is what some hunters mean when they say killing a deer is only a small part of it, or at least for me.

Joe

I bet that was rather shocking seeing the owl coming right at you like that. Their talons are about the size of a womans hand.
There is one guy I know of that literally had his eye put out by a great horned owl. He was doing some sort of study on their nesting. While he was up in his climbing gear checking on eggs or newly hatched ones in a nest, a parent swooped down on him, clawing is eye severly. After his eye healed, although permanently blind in it then, he continued with his studies. He wore a full football helmet with face mask from then on.
I was birding early last summer one evening right as it was getting dark. I was walking back behind a pond in a secluded area. I got about 20ft from two pine trees that were only a few feet apart when a great horned owl suddenly took flight about 15 to 20 feet right over my head. Literally a second later another flew from the tree right next to it at the same height. It scared me so bad that I had to put my hand down on the ground to keep from falling on the ground. I remember involuntarily gasping for air due to them shocking me so bad. I was out in the middle of no where but still remember looking around to make sure someone haden't walked up catching me reacting like a little girl. lol
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Randy Whittington

Glad I am not the only one they have freaked out!!! LOL. My heart raced for several minutes too. They are just incredible birds though. I found a recently hit screach owl on Rt. 301 in MD seven years ago. My buddy knew the taxidermist at the national zoo and turns out they needed the red phase (one I found) screach owl for an exhibit. They said my name was listed under the owl as the person who donated it, but I have never been down to see it. The owl had absolutely no damage whatsoever and it still has me wondering if it might have been shocked on the powerline or something.

Joe

That does make you wonder since it didn't show any damage of any kind. You usually at least see some loose feathers if they were hit by a car. That's cool that they put your name down as the donater!
Although screech owls live all through my area (along with most of the rest of the US) they are extremely hard to spot or even hear in my part of NC.

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Randy Whittington

I just looked at a field guide and I wanted to correct what I said about the similarity in size of the sharp-shinned and kestrels sizes. Sharp-Shinned are noticably larger on average but they do have more of a size crossover than I remembered. I remembered the ones I see in the field tend to have a noticable difference in size most of the time.
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Randy Whittington

Hi Randy, hmmmmmmm you are agreeing with me. Read what I said, ABOUT THE SIZE, so a little overlap is ABOUT THE SIZE.

There are about a million maybes and could be's to any one question and of course it could be this or could be that.

That said, I do have a little experience and my opinion is thats a coopers hawk.

Of course others like you could have different opinions.

This is the point of a forum, lets see what others have to say. I said my piece and you stated yours.

If we were to go further, I would say, your confusing a male(cock) coops, with a hen. And yes, I went throught this battle before, only I was on your end.

About all I have to actually say is, bird people are far more goody then herpers and we are pretty dang goofy.

Here in Az. we get birders from all over the world. Man can they fight with eachother. Have a great day.

It appears a little shorter than the bird bath although pictures can confuse size but if the bird bath is over 18 inches in diameter I'll change my tune.
There are definatly other things which effect their appearance as you said such as sex and age. The field marks just say sharp-shinned to me but as I said before, I've been wrong before and dare I say it but you probably have too at one time or another.
Birders do like to argue. Me and a lady went back and forth forever saturday morning on weather the waterthrush we saw was a northern or a louisiana(I still say northern). We did see 14 species of warblers which made the day.
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Randy Whittington

Hi fellas,

I can't tell whether its a sharp shinny or a cooper's without something to compare its size to. I have a pair of coops that take doves and pigeons from my feeders regularily. I love the way they use stealth to maneuver through pines to get close to their prey, unlike those red tails that just patrol above.

Last spring, while fishing and turtlin' in my canoe, I happened to be stationed beneath a big willow on the Buffalo River, when a red-winged black bird started scolding and harrassing a sharp shinny. They flew into the tree above me and disturbed a previously unseen peregrine falcon that was scouting a flock of ducks in the water. All three birds started squawking and spooked the ducks. Then the raptors took off in different directions griping as they flew away. It was quite cool and surreal. Our local coops are about crow sized and sharp shinnies are generally pigeon sized. Anyway, again, I can't make a guess without anything to compare the size to, as I certainly don't have the experience to tell the difference other than size. They look too similar to me. Great pics, thanks guys.

Will

I'm in with sharp-shinned too. The streaking on the belly looks more like sharp-shinned to me too.
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Greg Jackson

Hey,
I wondered if you could tell me the diameter of the bird bath the hawk is standing on.

Thanks, Randy Whittington
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Randy Whittington

It's 17 inches in diameter.

Thanks. I was guessing it was a small bird bath. I'll stick with thinking it's a female sharp-shinned.
Again, that's a great photo.
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Randy Whittington