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John Chardine
01-01-2009, 03:26 PM
Hope this thread doesn't show up twice- I just thought I had posted it but it went up in thin air!

We seem to have a theme on hawks/accipiters going right now. I had this bird in my yard, in Sackville, New Brunswick today. It was feeding on a bird kill- likely a starling. I thought a good way to start the new year (felicitations to all!) was to post an ID question.

Is there any way of telling from this image if the bird is a Cooper's or Sharp-shinned Hawk?

Dan Brown
01-01-2009, 03:45 PM
Hi John, Happy New Year! Tough ID is right! This bird seems to have a small head, short neck and thin legs compared to the bird in this posting http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=27084 which I think is a Cooper's Hawk. So, I think that this is a Sharpie:):) In my very amateur opinion "IMVAO":D

Roy Priest
01-01-2009, 05:43 PM
Happy new year. I too believe this is a Sharpie. Having seen tons of coopers, both wild and falconry birds, it just doesn't "look" like a coops.

John Chardine
01-01-2009, 05:59 PM
I agree and thanks. Sibley comes to the rescue again! The yellow eye makes this an immature bird and for this age class, Sibley describes the breast markings as "thin, dark streaks" for the Cooper's and "course, brown streaks" for the Sharpy. This description and his drawing of an immature Sharpie seems to match this bird better than the Cooper's.

Stephen Stephen
01-01-2009, 06:29 PM
John Happy New Year. Nice sharp image although I might be tempted to brighten it up a bit. These birds are messy eaters. Two years ago, on New Year's Eve day one landed in my back yard with a mourning dove and spent 25-30 minutes ripping it apart.

John Chardine
01-03-2009, 06:13 AM
Thanks Stephen. Yes I keep getting "bitten" by the issue of brightness. I have a bright, calibrated Apple Cinema display at home and use a colour-controlled workflow, and of course set the image up to look as good I can get it on my monitor. With all the other types of monitors, graphics cards and operating systems out there, and the various states of calibration, the assumption that what I see at home is what others see is probably not valid. Big question then becomes how do you prepare an image to be fairly sure it is going to look good on other monitors? Seems to be a bit of a crap shoot to me.

Having said all this the image was taken in the middle of a snow storm and the lighting was not the best. I'll try to bump up the brightness some.

Eleanor Kee Wellman
01-04-2009, 10:45 AM
I agree with the Sharpshin ID. What does it for me is the eye being close to the beak. Although I see few Coopers their eyes are more to the middle of their heads. It looks just like the juveniles, or first year birds, that I see around my place.

Paul Lagasi
01-04-2009, 11:27 AM
My two cents..no neck, Sharpie, longer neck, Coopers..Paul