As promised, as long as Patience is in the neighbourhood, I plan to keep updating B&M with recent shots. Probably, most will be quite similar; still, I’m interested in compiling a record of her over time…. The group of shots below were taken on October 24, 2018.

Click on any photo to enlarge it. To enlarge it further in a new tab, scroll down to the bottom of the enlargement and click “View full size.”

Published first in March 2017
and updated several times up to April 2024.

One of the great natural mysteries for me is how two species (sometimes more) can evolve to look so similar and yet not be an offshoot of the other. Take Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks, for example. If I see one or the other in the wild,
I really can’t be sure which it is, even though I’m familiar with many of the indicators that pros use to differentiate them.
I’m not alone!

For what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tells us look for,
go to their website. The images are NOT very good,
but the table summarizing the differences is helpful.
Click on items in their list for extra illustrations / details: Cooper’s vs Sharpies – Cornell

And from  another site  (info seems no longer visible unfortunately, comparative images copied below):

I’ve edited, for improved clarity, the description from Notes from the Wildside below:
“In the above composite image we can compare a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk ( left) with a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk (right).
When they are shown side by side, it easier to work out which is which, even though they are in slightly different postures.

• The eye looks larger and more foreward in the head on the smaller headed Sharpie.
  NOTE: CORNELL’S SITE SAYS THE OPPOSITE! “Eyes appear to be close to half way between front and back of head [of the Sharpie].” Just keeping life interesting….
  [To this, I’d add, from the Cornell site, that a Cooper’s head seems larger and less rounded than a Sharpie’s, and that the Cooper’s head appears ‘capped’ while the Sharpie’s appears ‘hooded’ with a shadowy patch down the nape. This may not be obvious with juvies, however….]
•  The Cooper’s head is typically less ‘tucked in’ than a Sharpie’s. There is a noticeable dark stripe on the throat of the Cooper’s.
• The breast pattern is ‘ dark brown’ on the Cooper’s, and, ‘warm brown’ on the Sharpie.
• Cooper’s display narrower and cleaner tear drop markings,  thinning out on the belly,
  whereas the Sharpie has heavier, or coarser,  ‘blurrier’ markings.
• On the Sharpie Broad note the broad barring on the flanks.
• Cooper’s  have thick sturdy legs (tarsi),  while Sharpies’  are delicate and pencil-thin.
• Though we can’t see the tail on the Cooper’s in this image, it is usually rounded compared to the Sharpies’ squared-off tail. While tail shape can be easier seen in flight, when posing upright with the tail fanned, a Cooper’s tail feathers get shorter towards the outer feather” giving it a rounded look when spread in flight.” (edited by KAR from the Wildside)

So what’s the one below, then?

This one has my Flickr friends giving me opposing labels. I think it’s an adult Cooper’s, but I’m still not sure….

From these lists, items that are easiest to examine are tail feathers, eye position, and head shape and cap, and in juveniles, breast markings. Size, it turns out, isn’t very reliable, as male Cooper’s are relatively small and female Sharpies are relatively large, so even though we know that Sharpies are generally noticeably smaller than Coops when comparing the same gender, it’s a problem when we can’t be sure which gender we’re looking at, and there’s no reliable way in the field to differentiate the males from their mates.

So, even knowing a few identifiers, I often have to wait until I get home and look at the images to make my guess — and then wait until after I’ve posted and real experts weigh in….

Sharpies range through more of Canada than Cooper’s do. Despite their larger range, it seems that there are more Cooper’s in total for the continent than their smaller lookalikes.   Click either image below to enlarge it.

Cooper’s range – CLoO

Sharp-shinned range – CLoO

It’s always exciting for most of us to come across either species. While not rare, they’re not a bird that I can expect to see on a regular basis, or at least, they weren’t until I moved to Kelowna. Here, their territories are a little easier for me to pin down than they were at The Coast. This winter, J L Cummins, a birder-photog colleague in Washington State, has enjoyed having a Sharpie in his backyard, and it has become as familiar to him as Kessie, the female American Kestrel has become for me. Perhaps the Cooper’s / Sharp-shinned that I observed  several times each winter and spring in our neighbourhood will become as identifiable as Jim’s…. (Update 2024: I haven’t seen either species in the neighbourhood for the past two years!)

So, I’ll wrap up this discussion of uncertainty with some photos taken in the neighbourhood:

The photo, below, of an adult bird has been identified by expert friends as a Cooper’s. To me it seemed large enough, and the tail is rounded, but I see a hood, not a cap on its rounded head and nape, which are more indicative of a Sharpie!

In January 2017 I had a great but unexpected opportunity to photograph the hawk below. Sadly, my camera settings were right for a previous photo I’d taken of a distant Red-Tail, and woefully wrong for this guy/gal. Surprisingly, when I posted it on Flickr anyway, it got far more hits and positive comments than it deserves. It’s here simply because, at the time, I promised myself that if I got another chance, I’d do much better…. See the next one….

So  finally, on March 8, 2017, I did get my “another chance.” Guided by instinct, at about 10 AM I entered Belmont Park from the east so I’d have the light behind me. The Park was extremely quiet, as it often is when there’s a hawk about. Just after I passed a small fir on my left, I heard a flapping of wings and figured I’d flushed one of the Mourning Doves that frequents the area. Then I saw the hawk as it veered to perch on a pine about 20 meters ahead of me. I got the shot, and, right or not, am calling it a Sharp-shinned, based largely on the one shot of the tail and the two shots of the head and nape.
Click on any of the photos to enlarge it.

Sharp-shinned with Quail breakfast – 1

Sharp-shinned with Quail breakfast – 2

Sharp-shinned with Quail breakfast – 3

Hope you got this far and that you enjoyed looking at these powerful and handsome hawks!

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WARNING to all who venture here: this is a VERRRRY looong, very image heavy post…! 

I am very grateful that our area is served by dozens of raptors, especially Red-Tailed Hawks. In what I call “my beat,” shown on the map below, each winter presents several different individuals. 2015-16 provided four RTHAs and one very friendly female American Kestrel. (UPDATE: she has found her mate and is frequently copulating.) I’m pretty sure I’d be UNable to differentiate so well at The Coast, given that I had to drive to find hawks and kestrels. Here, they’re only five minutes’ walk away, or, in many cases, a glance outside the window from my computer. We also see Bald Eagles frequently, and I’ll include them at the end….

We’ll start with the maps: first, the area, then the birds’ territorial map:

And now for the raptors:

Kessie, the female AMKE covers the territory of all the hawks west of the creek that is the basis of Thomson Marsh (and east of Gordon Road, and south of Mission Creek). I’ve been interacting with her since January 2015; she’s very friendly, of her own accord (i.e. no one’s baiting her or doing anything to entice her). She’s simply comfortable around people and cameras, and will often fly with me and others on our walks. She’s quite willing to look right at me when I whistle, and on lots of occasions has flown from distant locations to much closer perches almost as if she wants to be photographed. I’ve featured her before on this blog; here are a couple of new photos from the late winter of 2017 that I’m very happy about:

I thought the first one below was a pretty good look, but then I realized that I wasn’t pleased with the branches and told her so, telepathically. So she backed up to a better perch, gave me time to stagger up through the crusty snow and take more than 50 shots.

The first shot:

and the improved perch on a different tree:

Kessie makes my day….

Several days later, I watched and worked with her for twenty minutes while she scanned the area searching for lunch. Eventually, she caught a vole, flew up to one of her lamp post perches, and took her time dining, before retiring to a Cedar shrub….

Kessie enjoys a lite lunch…. (Click image above to enlarge in new tab.)

Resting after lunch…. (Click image above to enlarge in new tab.)
Interaction like this would be enough to make any day special!

But I promised you RTHAs, so let’s begin with a newcomer and my favourite, and a familiar greeter of so many of the folks who walk their dogs and their kids and spouses ’round the perimeter of the Rec Fields. I credit Mel Hafting (aka Birdergirl) with identifying Whitey as a Buteo jamaicensis harlani—a Harlan’s subspecies or possibly separate species depending on whose authority you accept. Whitey arrived sometime in December. I didn’t realize that he was here for the winter until December 22, when I got a series of shots as he perched on a large dirt pile behind the Capital News Centre Rec Facility about 300 meters from home. He allowed me to walk up to within 30 meters, and we’ve been good friends ever since. (Note: I say he, but I have no way to know the gender!)

I have many precious images of him, whether at a distance in the Raptor Tree across the Marsh or in various parts of his southern and eastern range as shown on the map we started with. Here are some of my favourites:

and some close ups near the entrance to Mission Rec Fields, just south of the CNC arena:

On this day, he hunted the same area from his lamppost:

and was successful:

Whitey can spot competition a couple of hundred meters away. It seems that the only threat he really cares about is at the eastern fringe of his territory. When Harri or Sunny dare to cross the invisible boundary, Whitey is likely to fly over and let them know who’s boss. I’ve not seen actual combat, but its always the other birds that retreat to their own territories. On the other hand, Re’ddy, who encroaches from the north, usually by roosting on one of the giant field lights that illuminate the Rec Fields, is never challenged by W, nor does R challenge W. (Actually, Re’ddy is a bit of a chicken hawk, it seems to me). R and W simply ignore each other.

Recently, as it appears that Harri has left the area (more on him in a moment), I see Whitey exploring more of the the eastern side of the territory, even perching occasionally on the fence posts that Harri had called his own….

A better indication of Whitey’s perching skills on his eastern perimeter….

Now, I expect most of you can see that Whitey’s colouration and territorial range make him easy to identify, and I suspect that many are wondering how I can be so sure about the other three…. Turns out there are both physical features and, more importantly, behavioural idiosyncrasies for each one that make the job fairly easy. Keep in mind, too, that I can often see all four hawks at the same time!

I’ll start with Harri, because I really don’t have decent photos of him. He rarely crosses the marsh into the Rec Fields. Instead, he cruises, Harrier-like (hence the nickname) along the fence line and through the great field on the east side of the Marsh, usually five to ten feet off the ground. When he does perch on a post, he takes flight as soon as he senses a camera being raised in his direction. He has a beautiful red tail (though it’s white underneath), and a light front that makes him a very desirable subject. On a scale of 1—10 for accessibility, where ‘1’ is “wrapped in the cloak of invisibility,” he’s a 3! Here’s the best I’ve been able to do with him so far:

Reddy Eddy is a different character! He has been around for the past two winters. Like Harri, he hates to see a piece of glass, especially if it’s a camera lens; he’s even nervous about binoculars. He has three preferred roost locations, two in the Raptor Trees on opposite sides of Michaelbrook Marsh, and several of the giant field lights). I can see Re’ddy almost every day, but it’s usually a lot of work to chase him around and get a photo although he’s slowly adjusting to birder-paparazzi. He used to simply fly away; now, he’s more willing to fly up and find a thermal or even fly over me to a distant perch. Like Harri, and unlike Sunny, he has, besides a quite light breast, a white throat, and this spring, a red tail. These features, together with his intense need for privacy, makes him a character easy to ID.

This is Re’ddy being attacked by a Red-winged Blackbird on March 25, 2016 — before he acquired his red tail. Click on the photos for captions and to enlarge. To close the expanded window, click on the small x in the top right corner.

RWBL chases Re’ddy away from the Big Willow

Closing in….

Contact imminent….

The RWBL has landed!

All I wanted was a shot of Re’ddy in flight (after he’d eluded me all winter), and what I got was so surprising and much better! You can’t wish for opportunities like this!

Finally, allow me to present Sunny, a newcomer last autumn who occupies the northeast quadrant of the map. On that 1-10 scale mentioned above, I rate him a 7.5. He’s camera tolerant but doesn’t really care to be stalked. When hunting, however, he maintains his focus pretty well and tolerates the yelps of dogs and people from the Dog Park while he hunts in the fields and mounds to the east. Recently, he seems to have expanded his territory, especially towards the Casorso Bridge and the Trapalanda Farm. Sunny has a darker head than Re’ddy, a dark throat, and dark eyes.

Why Sunny? Because my first photo of him was this one in early November 2016; click to enlarge these photos:

Sunny welcomes us to his new home!

Sunny in the Big Willow – 1

Sunny in the Big Willow – 2

He’s handsome and he knows it; clap your hands!

And then we get the occasional interloper that just doesn’t quite fit. I used to think this was Sunny, but the flight photos clearly show a white throat and a dark tail just beginning to turn red.

He can’t be Re’ddy (he didn’t behave like R. at all!) and the white throat doesn’t fit Sunny either (although I realize that there are plumage changes as juveniles age). As well, he’s way out of Harri’s range, and doesn’t fly like him. So, for all my certainty, there are still mysteries to be explored….

A lot of photos and explanation. For the few who took the time to read to the end, I hope you enjoyed the tour of my Red-tailed Beat….

Cheers!  😃

Oops! Almost forgot I’d promised eagles. Here’s a couple of shots I waited all winter to get:

This one and its mate were hanging out near the old nests just north of Mission Creek. Sadly, no sign that they’ll use them this spring.

To all who stayed in for the whole show, thanks for your patience!