Question: This guy was taking a bath in our driveway this morning. We are thinking a Cooper’s Hawk, can you confirm? Lisa and Jeff Caporossi
Answer: It is really nice to have a clear video to study! Let us work through the mental steps to sort out the identification.
The two most common types of hawks are Accipiters and Buteos. Buteos like Red-shouldered or Red-tailed Hawks would have heavy bodies and short tails. Accipiters are sleek birds with long tails. In the first frame before the video starts, one can see this is a sleek bird with a long barred tail-an Accipiter. This narrows it down to 3 possible birds: Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper’s Hawk, and American Goshawk. With that alone, we could call this a Cooper’s Hawk as the Cooper’s Hawk would be the only Accipiter in Seabrook Island, South Carolina at this time of the year.
It is said that all learning stops with the name, so since you now know the answer, you can ignore the many other things this video shows us, or read on and expand your knowledge.
- If you look at the legs, you will see they are heavy bright yellow legs. A Sharp-shinned Hawk has skinny little legs. This also rules out the Sharp-shinned Hawk, which can be on Seabrook Island in the winter.
- In that first frame of the video, one should notice that the belly has dark blotches. This field mark helps narrow down the age of the bird. An adult Coop will have red barring. Therefore, we know this bird is a young or immature bird. Can we tell more?
- Note the bill is black at the tip and grayish by the face. This grayish spot on the bill close to the face is called the cere. An adult bird would have a yellow cere. This also confirms it is an immature bird.
- Finally, the eye iris appears fairly dark. That makes me think that not only is this an immature bird, but it is very young. The iris quickly turns yellow in immature birds and slowly turns orange then finally red in adults.
- Other clues that say “young bird” can be found in the rigid placement of the white splotches on the back and the straight lines of alternating gray and black on the tail. The white feathers on the back are not a useful identification field mark as the quantity of white is highly variable. They can tell us a little about this birds age though. A young bird starts naked and grows all of its feathers at the exact same time. As a result young birds have crisp clean lines of feathers. With the first molt, which for birds is usually gradual (or they would be naked), the differing ages of each feathers messes up the clean lines in older birds. Note how the white feathers on this bird are uniform in size and placement and the lines of the tail are straight. It is a young bird.
- Here is some homework for you this summer. You can use this knowledge about feathers on the beach! Soon the shorebirds will start to arrive. For many species, the adults leave the young birds on their natal ground and the adults head south weeks before the young birds wise up. So the first shorebirds you will see on North Beach will be ragged looking. By mid-August the young birds will start to show up. You will recognize them by the crisp clean lines of feathers. Try to see if you can notice the difference.
So, the questions originally asked is what kind of bird is this taking a bath. The short answer is this bird is a young Cooper’s Hawk. The long answer provides a lot more information and fun for me.
Answered by: Bob Mercer