Cooper's Hawk along the Little Miami...and the value of a field journal...

I often see Cooper's Hawks in my backyard, but I saw this fellow along the Little Miami River. I see him regularly in the same spot in a tree about 20 feet off the bike trail. The first time I saw him there was October 9, 2007 (since I've seen a Cooper's Hawk in the exact spot many times since then, I like to think it's the same bird, but who knows, maybe it's just a popular branch!). From my field journal:

Thursday, October 9, 2007 (1:30 p.m., 85 degrees)   A breeze sweeping through the over-dry trees—leaves falling in such fast succession it sounds like rain (not beautiful, colored leaves, but brown, crispy leaves, victims of the drought). The trees are still green—odd to see and hear falling leaves. Wow! Three or four steps further I am eye level with a Cooper's Hawk. His back is to me—blue-gray feathers, three black bars on his tail. When he turns his head, I see a fierce red/amber eye. He knows I'm there. He flies away.

Cooper's Hawk along the Little Miami River and bike trail.

I'm so glad I've kept a field journal over the years. I've learned a lot from observations, and I like being able to go back and check on dates. When I saw this fellow a few days ago, I wondered how many years it had been since I first saw him claiming that branch. I was thinking three or four years...turns out it's been almost seven years! Cooper's Hawks live an average of 12 years in the wild, but according to Cornell, the oldest known Cooper's Hawk was 20.4 years, which means this could very well be the same bird, and I might see him on that exact branch for many years to come!

A beautiful Cooper's Hawk surveys his territory in the woods along the little Miami River. 

I'm going to be volunteering at the Biggest Week in American Birding warbler festival (on Lake Erie near Toledo, Ohio) this May. On May 12 and may 15, I'll be teaching a class for beginners on basic field sketching and nature journaling techniques. If you're there and want to learn how to start sketching in the field and the importance of keeping a field or nature journal, sign up for the class. I'd love to see you there!

(...on the other days I'll be roaming the Magee Marsh boardwalk watching the amazing phenomena of spring migration along Lake Erie. If you want to see warblers and other neotropical migrants, come to Magee Marsh in May. The trees along the boardwalk literally drip with birds as they rest and fuel up for the last leg of their journey across Lake Erie to their nesting grounds up north). Click here for registration information.


...and in other birding news...
Little Miami, Inc. has a new name! They are now the Little Miami Conservancy, which is much more fitting since they have been involved with river conservation since 1967!

Click here to learn more about the Little Miami Conservancy.

Click here for a pdf explaining their mission and history.

Click here for their Facebook page.

I'm going to have another post soon about everything they do. If you're looking for a way to volunteer and help protect the Little Miami River and its riparian corridor, check them out!

Juvenile Cooper's Hawk in the snow...

A juvenile Cooper's Hawk surveys his surroundings...

A Juvenile Cooper's Hawk sits in the snow...

5-8 more inches of new snow will be on the ground by Monday morning, Coop!

...I think he's ready for spring!

Hello Mr. Cooper...

I came home for lunch today and found this male Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) perched outside my kitchen window. I photographed him through glass and a screen...and it was dark and snowy, so the photos aren't the best, but you can still see the beauty in him. It's always a shock to look out the window and see this fierce fellow looking back...

Adult male Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) outside our kitchen window. Even the gloom of a steel-gray winter's afternoon can't dull his rusty red chest and belly feathers. His dark blue-gray head and shoulders add to his beautiful coloring. 

See you later, Mr. Cooper! 

Cooper's Hawk in the snow...

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me,

he complains of my gab and my loitering.

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself, LII

I’ve always liked this line from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself (click here for an online version of the poem). It makes me laugh. I definitely have been scolded by hawks for loitering...

I don't think a Cooper's Hawk was the "spotted hawk" Whitman wrote about in his poem, but this Cooper's Hawk sure seems to be accusing me of something and complaining about it too!

...and he has every right. Our hawks have lost their perfect backyard perch—the dead limb on the half-dead weeping willow tree that extended out into the yard for prime viewing. "Where's my limb?" he complains. "What have you done with it?" he accuses. For years the hawks always perched on that limb—the hawk branch. It was so hawky it even had its own name. Cooper's Hawks, Red-shouldered Hawks, Sharp-shinned Hawks, and once or twice, even a Red-tailed Hawk, have claimed it, watching the comings and going of everything in our yard, including us. From the perch, the hawks could see directly into our kitchen. We miss the limb as much as the hawks do. It was always a treat to walk into the kitchen and find a hawk sighting us. The hawks are making do with the other branches in the willow, the ash, and the mulberry trees, but it's just not the same...

...the snow was pretty, but it didn't last long!

Joe "Hollywood" Cooper

This juvenile Cooper's Hawk is so pretty he must be a bird actor...

...show me........Dejection!

...show me.......Regal like an Eagle!

...show me.......Anticipation!

...okay, okay...you've shown me enough...I'll move on.

(I don't know why these hawks never want me to stick around and always end up giving me the stink eye!)

I found this juvenile Cooper's Hawk sitting on our deck. Walking up on him and seeing him so close took me by surprise, and I sort of did that jumpy second-look move, which unfortunately frightened him off, but he didn't go far. He perched in the Ash Tree about 20 feet away and surveyed the offerings for a while--enough time for me to get the camera and snap off a few shots before he grew bored with the clicking and took to the wing...with a flourish, of course!

Two Cooper's Hawks square off in our half-dead weeping willow tree...

Tuesday, as I got out of the car with groceries in hand, I heard strange hawk sounds coming from the backyard so I ducked out of the garage to have a look. Two Cooper's Hawks were fighting over the prime viewing branch in our great big beautiful half-dead weeping willow tree. "Oh my gosh...I've got to get this" was going through my mind, so I quickly carefully/gently (sort of) dropped the grocery bags on the driveway and dashed inside to get the camera. I shot through the kitchen window and caught the end of the fight. It's the first time I've ever seen two hawks fighting over the branch, but not the first time I've seen two hawks in the tree at the same time. I've often seen an adult and juvenile Cooper's Hawk perched on different branches, and once a Red-shouldered Hawk joined them without any squabbles. This time the juvenile was challenging the adult for "the branch," but she didn't dislodge the adult...he remained king, showing off a few awesome threat displays and not budging when she directly attacked him.

"I'm bigger than you, kid. Beat it."

"Reiteration...bigger, badder, meaner, smarter. Beat it!"

"Actually, pops, I'm bigger." Glare.

Attack!

...another "Art of the Flying Fan Dance" shot (remember the first one?).

"Uh huh...that's what I thought..."

...slyly checking to make sure the interloper was loping away.

King for another day...

Beak Bit
Larry of The Birder's Report let me know he was just reading about Cooper's Hawks and discovered their eye color can be an indicator of their age. Larry wrote, quoting "Birds of North America Online," the eyes are:

"bluish-gray in fledglings, increasingly replaced by yellow in immatures. In brief, yellow or light orange in yearlings, shifting progressively to darker shades of orange and red with age, males averaging darker than females of the same age, and detectable change ceasing at about 5 yr of age."

So our king of the perch may only be a yearling or an older brother of the immature female. Since the younger bird was already larger than the older hawk, I decided she was a female since female hawks are usually larger than the males of the species.

...this one's not cute...

A friend mentioned that I only show cute birds doing cute things on the blog and wondered if I ever photographed non-cute birds doing non-cute things.....

...well, as a matter of fact, I do.

...it's just that I usually don't post the non-cute acts. I did post a Red-shouldered Hawk eating a vole last January after Matty spotted him, but usually, the gruesome shots stay tucked in the archives. I photographed this guy in my backyard last week and decided to post him. After all, a hawk has to do what a hawk has to do to survive, and this guy was doing it very well. I was amazed at how quickly and efficiently he plucked through the bird's feathers.

After clearing the feathers, he ripped through the skin.

Hawks are definitely not cute. They are magnificent...fearsome....beautiful...but not cute.

Beak Bit

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Bird's site explains that Cooper's Hawks kill birds by squeezing them to death with their feet, not biting into the bird until it's dead. They also list that Cooper's Hawks have been known to drown birds before eating them too...

To see bird photography from all over the world, visit:

Beauty and the beastie...

Here's the beauty...

This little female Northern Cardinal was so pretty in the snow as she rooted around looking for breadcrumbs.

...and then she tilted her head and gave me that sweet expression--totally melting my heart...

And here's the beastie...

Not really...he's one of the most majestic and beautiful birds that visit my backyard. I always look twice when I see our hawks zipping in and out of branches as they try to nab one of the feeder birds.

...or when I walk into the kitchen and see him sitting in the half-dead weeping willow, seemingly looking right in on me. He hears me every time I click that camera. I don't think he approves. You'd think he would be used to it by now...

Beastie forgives me as he goes back to looking for his lunch.

Juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk

At first I assumed this guy was a juvenile Cooper's Hawk because we have a lot of adult Cooper's Hawks in our area, but he's a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk! I was just now looking out the window, and a juvenile Cooper's Hawk flew up. His tale had wide bars in it--a definite difference. This fellow's tail has small bars. He would be our first ever juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk! Yeah!!! Last winter, we had an adult Red-shouldered Hawk fly in our yard twice, once on January 17, 2009 and again on January 26, 2009. Maybe this is an offspring of that bird. Exciting!! Thanks Roy (from Roy's World) for mentioning the tail...and thanks Mike (from Everybody Funny) for corroborating!

Hot off the press...this Cooper's Hawk just landed in the backyard. Look at those wide bars in his long tail.

Weather Report...

It's snowing like crazy here. We may get up to 8 inches! I hope so. If we do I'll be out tromping around with my camera tomorrow. There's nothing like fresh fallen snow. (We did get snow through the night--about 5 or 6 inches of it. Rick is outside shoveling now. I'm getting ready to put on my snow gear and head to the Little Miami River. I love snow!!)

The Artistic Cooper's Hawk...

…for me, fuzzy photos = artistic photos, so this batch is as artsy as they come…but I love them! I took these through the screen of the kitchen window in glowing late afternoon light. I had to climb up on the counter, sitting half in the sink to capture them because he was almost out of view. The strange angle of the lens against the screen put a soft halo around the bird…and the low-angled sunlight lit the grasses in the background with warm golden tones.

This is a handsome bird. When I look at his eyes and beak I see beauty, but the little birds in my yard don't see that. Instinctually, they see danger. So starts the love/hate relationship with hawks and other birds of prey.

I'm a fluffy bird. I like to fluff. Fluffing is my favorite...

I like how the camera captured his eye in this photo...just a sliver.

I am a formidable bird. Look into my eyes and tell me I don't make you tremble...

I have no idea what he's looking at here. He obviously dropped in to pick up some some fast food at our feeders, but all of our little McTitmice, McJuncos and McChickadees were long gone.

I spent about an hour and a half last night looking through my books of nature poetry trying to find a poem about a hawk. Seems poets shy away from the power of the bird or the fact that he kills for a living. I found a few, but nothing struck me with the beauty I see in this bird. Not even Emily Dickinson or Thoreau came through for me. Walt Whitman has a nice poem about a hawk, but the line...

“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.”

…didn’t capture what I felt when I saw him. I think Emerson's essay on nature and beauty probably comes a little closer:

A NOBLER WANT OF man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.

The ancient Greeks called the world Cosmos, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping.

(from "Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson.")

...there is no denying the beauty in his form and eyes, but even though I'm drawn to him, I have to acknowledge his power and his ability to kill the little birds I feed.

....I think I'll forget about that part and remember his job is to pull the sick and slow birds out of the population. Mother Nature has a plan, so I'll admire the fierce glare in his eyes and sleek tilt of his brow...and shoo him away every now and then as I try to get closer with my camera (because I don't think Mother Nature envisioned her Cooper's getting fat at the local fast-food joint!). Good thing our Blue Jays sound the warning and the healthy birds get out fast.

Be sure to visit Bird Photography Weekly for cool birds seen all around the world.

A Kitchenhawk in the plum tree...

...a Kitchenhawk is an accipiter that sits outside my kitchen window. His size is a bit iffy---he's about halfway between the size of an Obvious Sharp-shinned Hawk and an Obvious Cooper's Hawk. A week or so a go, an Obvious Sharp-shinned Hawk (juvenile) landed outside my kitchen window. He was small--really no larger than a Blue Jay. A few days later, the same munchkin landed on the deck, followed about an hour later by an Obvious Cooper's Hawk (juvenile). She was very large! But for the past couple of days, this in between-sized hawk has been visiting the plum tree and hockey net on the kitchen side of the house. My guess is he is a small, male juvenile Cooper's Hawk, but sometimes he seems small enough to be a Sharp-shinned. I do not know enough about hawks to make a decision. His tail feathers seem rounded and uneven, which points towards a Cooper's but.....any experts out there? I'll have more photos of him over the next couple of days.

When I showed this photo to Rick, he sad it was a shame the tree was in the way, but I sometimes like these peeping-through-the-woods shots. You'd never know this fellow was sitting about 10 feet outside my kitchen window. Although the fuzziness has that shooting-through-a-screen feel.

I would hate to be a tiny mouse or bird and be on the receiving end of that stare!!

...that beautiful orange-buff head makes me lean towards a small male Cooper's Hawk.

...another Peeping Tom shot! I love the intense focus that always shows up in a hawk's eye.

Hockey playing Cooper’s Hawk…

Rick was looking out the kitchen window when a young Cooper’s Hawk decided to perch on the hockey net at the end of the driveway. He appears to be assessing the situation and studying all the strewn hockey gear.

Hmmm…sticks and pucks. What good are those--

I can’t eat them! This net, however, is a nice perch.

…very nice, indeed--eye level with a feeder 

full of American Tree Sparrows!

Rick then snuck out the back door and around the corner to get a better shot, but as soon as the Cooper caught sight of him, he took off, which…bonus!...turned into a really cool flight photo.

...a Cooper's Hawk is in the ice house.

Matty and I are housebound again today, so Rick (The Spotter) came home to say hi and pick up an extra hard drive. As he swept through the kitchen, he spotted a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk on the willow and grabbed the camera. I told him because of all his recent spotting activity I was changing his name from The Spotter to just "Spot." Spot is shorter and easier to write and will save me time with the blog (he just smiled, the joy of being a blog character). 

The Cooper’s Hawk, looking regal, surrounded by ice. 

The willow branches are drooping more than usual, and several branches have snapped. It doesn’t look like the ice will clear anytime soon, and more snow is on the way for Monday (more snow days from school? Matty will be happy).

New Backyard Bird, a Red-shouldered Hawk

As Rick (the Spotter) walked into the kitchen this morning, what did he see? A hawk staring at him through the kitchen door window! He immediately grabbed the camera and snapped off a quick shot.


Then he had Matty open the door slowly so he could photograph him using the monopod.


Let’s zoom in a little bit. Isn’t he a gorgeous, stocky bird? His colorful chest and bold black and white bars on his tail are very striking.



As he was looking over his new territory, a young Cooper’s Hawk flew up and perched in the same tree. The Spotter scores a twofer! Unfortunately, the Cooper’s Hawk was a bit skittish, so Rick had to retreat back inside to photograph him. Our greasy, grimy gopher gut windows didn’t allow for a crisp shot, but it works for me!

A juvenile Cooper's Hawk perches near the Red-shouldered Hawk.