Yesterday, at approximately 13:28 (so says my camera’s time-stamp) The Mommy urgently required our attention to the hawk she spotted in our backyard.
Digression. Incidentally, it was scoping the two corn-fed rodents we keep penned that were instinctively huddled under one or the other of the covered portions of the pen.
I am quite confident that my over-engineered rabbit tractor will keep the rabbits safe from anything this neighborhood can dish out and the hawk agreed; he didn’t dilly-dally. Methinks he spied all those staples and made haste.
Only a motivated bear would be capable of overcoming my defenses…well that and any mildly interested three year old who might occasionally leave the door open.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t feel too comfortable, for the rabbits sake, with an Ozette-trained raccoon in our backyard; I bet one of them could muster my gravity-fed, door-clasp.
It was really close at first and quickly moved to another perch for another view into the pen. I run-walked for the camera and snapped about 6 pics before it flew off.
I KNEW I could identify it with some quality shots.
So I confidently opened my birdbook (3rd edition) and quickly found that the Sharp Shinned and Coopers hawks are so danged close in all respects (and may even be confused with the Northern Goshawk) that the book makes a point of saying how “confusingly similar” they all are.
Argh!
So, I can’t be sure of anything but how freakishly happy I am with this picture (and by extension my camera). This second shot is only a close-up (full resolution) of the head from the first shot which allows you to see good color, good beak detail, and an amazing red eye.
For my own self, I am leaning towards Sharp Shinned only because of the slightness of the bird. Sharp Shinned hawks are 10-14″ while Coopers are 14-20something” in length. That and the Sharp Shinned is more common around here.
I could reproduce the image with me out there holding a ruler but I am quite sure I would find that the estimate would be 14″ – so fahgeddaboudit (for now).
blief 
You have a built-in scale right in the picture! The width of the fence boards! I assume they are “four-inch” boards, surfaced on four sides, which means they would be about 3 1/2 inches wide. Using a handy device (my three fingers snuggled together) I get three board-widths from tip of tail to top of head; that is 10 1/2 inches (+/- 1/2 inch or so).
ERGO: Your I.D. of Sharp-Shinned hawk sounds solid to me!!
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Possibly those boards are “six inch” boards, making the finished size 5-1/2 inches. Using Grumpy’s measuring system, it would make the bird 16-1/2 inches long. That puts it into the Northern Goshawk size range.
I’ll bet you could identify the exact board the bird was sitting on, using the alignment with the neighbors window, and knowing where you were when you took the photo. Then you could measure the width of that board, and multiply it times three sets of Grumpy’s fingers to get the actual bird size.
I’ll put some more effort into the search for my Sibley’s field guide and see if it has something to help us identify this bird.
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Can´t you just look at his shins?
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Whatever it is, it sure is impressive!
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