Berkeley Backyard Bird Blog: Two Small Forest Hawks Crash Scene, Make Ruckus in Branches

Sharp-shinned (?) / Cooper's (?) Hawk (!)

I've written about the 108-year old Interior Live Oak gracing our side yard in our lush North Berkeley neighborhood – an arboreal specimen of great stature attracting diverse bird life, and apparently humans as well.

At least I know he's a he (?) and a juvenile (!)

A while ago, two guys from Boston were out front peering into the branches. I greeted them and they said they were staying with friends around the corner and had read about this "famous" tree on "some cool bird blog."

Ripe for pickin' tree top canopy of 108-year old Oak

As profiled on the

berkeleybackyardbirdblog!

I'm practically posing for you - which Hawk am I?

We had a good laugh and proceeded to spot, over a ten minute spell of affability – only a dog on a leash and bird watching can provoke such instant amity! – a dozen birds, including a Bewick's Wren, two Ruby-Crowned Kinglets, a Pacific-slope Flycatcher and her fledgling, and a Sparrow of some kind.

Pacific-slope Flycatcher chick learning to fly in yard

I've seen Northern Mockingbirds, Downy Woodpeckers, Lesser Goldfinches, and Sharp-shinned Hawks. Or so I suspect the Sharp-shinned.

Almost tropical looking Finch

Over a year ago, what I thought was a Sharp-shinned came zooming in to land on a branch, perching there for several minutes. Come to think of it, he may have been a Cooper's Hawk. Tough to tell, but yesterday, two small Forest Hawks appeared and flapped and squawked about for several intermittent hours in the big thick branches of the 108-year old tree.

Whoever I am, I sure am a pretty Hawk

The two Hawks – Sharp-shinned and Cooper's – should be easy to differentiate in theory, but in practice, it's tough to tell them apart, at least in my practice. The pair were definitively juveniles, that much I do know – so where's mom and pop?

Who am I, really? Maybe neither?

That's just one level of distinction between the two species, as well as the Sharp-shinned being smaller, tucking in his head, sporting a squared off tail, and blotched with broad streaks; whereas the (juvenile) Cooper's is larger, has a rounded tail tip, and has finer streaks on white breast.

C'mon! I.D. me already!

Still, knowing all this, positively identifying these two visitors took twenty minutes of perusing two hard-bound field guides and two web resource sites before concluding, what may have been obvious to YOU all along, that they were a pair of juvenile Cooper's Hawks.

I'm going with Sharp-shinned Hawk . . .

Can anyone prove differently?

Does it matter?

. . . but what do I know?

And yet throughout this blog,

I've been referring to the yard birds

as Sharp-shinners!

Yes, I am scolding!

I wonder if these guys were out on a foray on their own, learning the ropes, told to go kill something to eat? Or that transmitted instinct telling them it's time to do so. The adults were nowhere to be seen, so this was a real pop quiz for the boys.

Red-shouldered Hawk spotted in Live Oak Park

Presuming they were boys, the two small, handsome Hawks put on quite a show throughout most of the morning and early afternoon, emitting high-pitched caws and flopping about from branch to branch.