Interesting Accipiter and Eagles
Two March 6 Emails:
A hawk from Grand Haven.
- Dan Lockard
Thanks, Dan. I just passed this off as a young Red-tailed Hawk when Dan emailed me, but thanks to Anonymous (see Comments) I looked again. Obviously that's an accipiter's tail (not the wooden structure) under the bird, and as Anonymous suggested, how about Northern Goshawk? I'm posting the species name in purple instead of red because it could also be a Cooper's Hawk. I'll post some additional thoughts in the Comments section for anyone still interested in this topic. - Ric
While traveling north down Henry Street across the Mona Shores Bridge, I spotted two Bald Eagles perched high up in the trees on the northwest side of the bridge. Wish I could have stopped to get a picture. They looked beautiful against the blue sky today. - Rey Flores
5 comments:
How about a young Northern Goshawk?
Maybe a young Cooper's Hawk, the tail is long with thick bands. the pallet is 6.5" tall
Hey, Dan, you're up early! I just read Anonymous's Goshawk suggestion, reposted that, and came back to make my replies when I found your comments too. I also was wondering about the much more likely young Cooper's Hawk, and since you were there and saw the bird in person, I'll go back and re-post as an unknown accipiter even though it looks like a Goshawk (and this has been one weird winter). One of my reasons was something Pete Dunne wrote about the width of a Goshawk's tail being thicker/broader than a young Cooper's Hawk's tail. But Dunne was writing about a structure seen in flying birds. He mentions the breast area is lighter and "cleaner" looking in Cooper's versus Goshawk. This is hard to figure in the angle of Dan's photo. Sizes of accipiters are hard to use because males and females are distinctly different sizes and although the three accipiter species (including sharp-shinned) don't overlap, you'd probably need the bird and a ruler in your hand to tell a large male of one from a small female of another. This bird does "look" big! I really like Dan's idea of using the pallet dimensions to tell, but because of stuff already said, probably not possible. Structurally a Cooper's two outer tail feathers are shorter than the others (not so in Sharp-shinned which is structurally more like a Gos, but I don't know offhand in a Gos. I'll check another reference book later and post if I find it). Unfortunately that's probably unusable because the tip of this bird's tail is hidden. Next time, Dan, please ask the bird to raise its tail for the photo! Maybe Anonymous and/or Brian or Caleb will chime in with more. No matter, it's a cool bird!
The supercillium, eye stripe, is not broad and white enough for a goshawk. It is a young Cooper's. Kevin Thomas
Thanks, Kevin!
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