Never seen one? It is a hawk with short wings and long tails. 10-14 inches. Blue Jay-size, but thinner. A larger, rarer, Coopers Hawk has a rounded tail tip.
Last winter a sharp-shinned flew into a large window of our sunroom. Otherwise I would never have seen one. They are quite beautiful.
Range: Alaska; MacKenzie, British Columbia; and Newfoundland. Newfoundland -- I was there once for two weeks, climbing telephone poles and running telephone lines with the Seabees. Also sharp-shinned hawks can be found south to Florida and northern Mexico. Don't you find that amazing?
I saw one again today as I was cutting wood in the front of the house. It preys on warblers and sparrows, small rodents and insects. It flies low and rapido. Like five-feet-or-so low. The sparrows were chirping away, so I guess he was after them. He landed for a few seconds in a large rhododendron that our neighbor Teddy and grandson Abel call “The Sloth Cabin.” He had no luck today.
Sharp-shinned hawks are intolerant of civilization and have become scarce as breeding birds in more settled areas.
The Wampanoags said that when you see a special animal, you will be blessed for that day -- and I was. It was a good day. A really good day.
1 comment:
I've never seen one close up. I've seen them when I was up in the Monzano Mountains with some local HawkWatch folks who showed me how to differentiate between them and Coopers based on the amount of wobble in the glide. Saw a Coopers in a tree down at the Bosque del Apache -- knew it was a Cooper's by the rounded tail. Saw what I thought was one or the other fail to frighten some city pigeons in a parking lot once when I was riding the bus. It was funny: at first I thought it was two pigeons trying to mate until I realized it was late autumn!
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