i believe this is a coopers hawk, it was pretty large so i didn't think it was a sharp shinned, it was working my bird feeder, i have had a sharp shinned before, i found this out while drinking a nice leisurely cup of coffee one morning, karen is watching the chickadee's eat at her nice new bird feeder, when i hear her say, that bird just exploded, what happened. sitting on my pasture fence towards the house end checking out the available prey, mostly sparrows picking over the garden seed stalks
Looks good for an immature cooper's. Has the longer tail, well banded and rounded, and the white spots on its back. They should generally appear a bit smaller than typical red-shoulder or red-tailed hawks - but if you were comparing size to a sharp-shinned, then a cooper would typically be larger.
well i knew it wasn't my local red tail, i see him almost everyday and he also never ever sits that low, on the top rail of a pasture fence, and it didn't have the red shoulders. my sharp shinned was indeed much smaller. cool, i have now had no less than 5 separate raptors here, red tail, red shoulder, sharp shinned, coopers and osprey. with all the sparrows, starlings and chickadees working the seed pods this fall, i have my own version of feed the birds going on ( apologies to the sherman brothers)
thanks howie, that means a lot coming from the bird man of tmip. sometimes you don't have to go far to get wildlife, i took this with the 5dmk3, and the 70-300 L is, from just inside my sliding glass door out to the upper deck, i didn't want to leave the shadow of the door so as not to scare him off, he was actually there for awhile as karen saw him, called to me, i had to run to the back end of the house, grab the camera. choose and mount a lens and run back to the dining room to shoot this, all the while hoping the 2 dogs did not decide to join in barking at tll the human excitement going on.
From a fellow bird lover ... excellent pic & wow the luck. My dogs would never have stayed quiet that long. Also why is our cameras always far from where the action is. As for the id...definitely a coopers in my opinion. The wider rounded bottom band leads me to that conclusion. Usually I have to determine the id based on flight behavior. Got to love your raptor assortment. Wish I could come visit your yard.
