new visitor to the barn tonight

[estesbubba]

1 hour ago, Bankstick said:

https://feederwatch.org/learn/tricky-bird-ids/coopers-hawk-and-sharp-shinned-hawk/

Coopoer's hawk based on the length of the tail feathers, according to my wildlife officer friend.

I usually go by sharp-shinned was squared tail and Cooper’s rounded for indentification.  Both are acrobatic flyers and can snatch smaller birds out of the air. 

[Tpt life]

30+ years a hawk watcher. No bird man worth his salt calls definitively on a perched Cooper/Sharpie call. I definitely lean Sharpie due to head shape and relative length of neighboring tail feathers. 

[Bankstick]

My friend went on the length of the tail feathers.  He is a wildlife officer and has logged a lot of hours in the field and woods.  I'll go with his ID.  If you want, I could cut and paste his email.

Quote

Hard one to tell in the field but that pic shows the outer tail feathers are shorter than the inner ones which is makes it a definite Coopers.

 

[estesbubba]

The outer feathers being shorter gives it a rounded tail which points to Coopers. Here’s one that was on our property that I watched flush out some birds and snatched one out of the air. After that happened another Coopers showed up and started chasing this one flying with the bird. Pretty cool to watch. 

[Bankstick]

We have watched this hawk, now we have two, for some time.  The local  paper had a photo of one and it was IDed as a Cooper's hawk.  My wife has taken several photos of them and compared them to a number of photos on the Internet- definitely a Cooper's hawk.  She even found a photo of an immature one- totally different in coloration.