Juvenile Cooper's Hawk, Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia

In Albums: nature birds Philadelphia

Jul 16th, 2012, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows a juvenile cooper's hawk, sighted July 18th, 2012, in Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia, in a group of 4 hawks, presumably a family unit. I found this bird hard to identify, but this close-up photo helped immensely. Juvenile hawks can be tricky because juvenile plumages are more similar to each other, and birders usually encounter fewer juvenile birds. From a distance, the bird's chunky shape and dark brown back led me to falsely think at first that this bird was a buteo, such as a Red-shouldered Hawk. This was further confounded by the fact that the bird's calls sounded more similar to the vocalizations of the Red-shouldered hawk than to the vocalizations of adult Cooper's hawks, which I am more familiar with.

The main possible species of confusion, in my case, was a juvenile Red-shouldered hawk.

To identify this bird, note:

• Long tail identifies this bird as an accipiter (In North America, only Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, or Sharp-shinned Hawk). Buteos, such as a juvenile red-shouldered hawk, have shorter tails.
• Wide spacing on tail stripes also distinguishes this bird from Red-shouldered hawk. Juvenile red-shouldered hawks have much finer spacing on the tail stripes, with narrower stripes, closer together, and more total stripes.
• Yellow eye also excludes juvenile red-shouldered hawk, which has a darker eye, often so dark that the iris is not distinctly visible.
• Large size and rounded tip to tail (not the best example in this photo) excludes juvenile sharp-shinned hawk, which is considerably smaller and usually has a more squared-off-looking tail.
• Range and frequency of breeding also points to this species over the two most visually-similar species, red-shouldered hawk, and sharp-shinned hawks. Both of these species are very rare breeders around the Philadelphia area. Cooper's hawk is much more common as a breeder, relative to these two species.