Even Hawks in the Trees Do It.....

Female Cooper's Hawk 

Yesterday when I stopped to snack between classes, I heard some unfamiliar bird sounds coming from the trees on either side of my car. Their vocalizations reminded me of sqeaky-toys. Bird number one was about the size of a Jay, with perky, Jay-type body language, and light coloration, but it had a hawk face and it was enthusiastically eating a bird. The deceased meal bird had a finchy tail, possibly a goldfinch. Turns out, the bird on the opposite side of the street, was also in a tree eating, however this bird had completely different coloration -- warm buffy breast, dark top of head and wings.  Both birds had fluffy white feathers on either side of their tails. When number one bird flew with meal to eat in the same tree as the second bird, I noticed a significant size (as well as coloration) difference between them, and made the assumption that the first bird was a baby and the second bird was the mom. They were speaking the same bird language.

After "baby" finished his meal, he abruptly flew over to "mom" and briefly mounted her, flapping his wings. How rude! She was not even finished with her meal! And, it was starting to look less like a mom and baby situation. More like -- two birds met at a bar, or birdfeeder. This frisky young upstart flew back across the street and hopped around from branch to branch with powerful legs, poking and pulling on twigs. He looked quite clownish and reminded me of a parrot playing around. After the female finished her meal, she flew to the tree next to "frisky's" and sat preening. At this point, I was experimenting with how close I could get to take a photo. Alas, I was shooting into the rainy sky, and could only get profiles, instead of portraits. While shooting, "frisky" decided to make another attempt to mate, and I caught his approach. It was over so quickly, I don't think he accomplished the deed.

Male hawk landing on female.

So, who were these interesting, if smallish hawks? Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-Shinned Hawks can look identical (the latter are smaller at twelve inches vs. seventeen inches for the Cooper's), and they both raid bird feeders (for birds) for a living. According to my book (Birds of the Willamette Valley Region, Nehls, Aversa, Opperman), the male Cooper's is only slightly larger than the female Sharp-Shinned, so the females account for the difference in size between the two types of hawks. Sharp-Shinned hawks have skinny legs, while Cooper's have big, powerful legs, and "frisky" had remarkable legs. Also, their vocalizations matched the Cooper's Hawks on the Cornell Ornithology site. The last interesting tidbit from my book is that Cooper's can breed in the first year, while still in juvenile plumage. "Frisky" looks like he's still trying to figure things out.