Ever see one of these in your backyard??

[woolworh]

Are those hawks rare to see in the wild?

 

[Istandalone]

Sure it wasn't one of these:

Mississippi Kite

Very common in that area.

 

[Bruno2]

Hey All,

After the game, my wife and I went to her folks house for a visit. My in-laws live just a few blocks North of 63rd, on Penn.

Well the dog.....really the spoiled child....wanted to go for a walk and I obliged. Walking down the street on the way back to my in-laws home I noticed several crows (looking intently on something) in my in-laws backyard.

Going through the house and into the backyard I saw this, a Cooper's Hawk eating a dove with the crows waiting for him to leave or drop it so they could finish it.

Anyone ever see one of these....Cooper's Hawk??
[Broken External Image]

Lived quite a few years in the country side of Oklahoma and I didn't see one of these....just Red Tail Hawks.

Cohiba

I had one of those in my backyard. he had a small bird of some kind in his talons. A sparrow or something small.

 

[RaysZ71]

Saw one last year. My neighbor had small chicks. One day while we were BSing at the fence, on of these birds came down, picked up a small chick and flew off. We looked at each other like wtf was that. Pretty interesting.

 

[filobeto]

Bad ass bird. Nice talons.

 

[Henry]

I live on the outskirts of Yukon and can tell you there are some, or at least one, of those around my place. Seems like when they are around you don't see any res tails or owls. Maybe they are the mack daddy of the small raptor family

 

[RWS]

i beleive that sharp shinned hawk is what i've always heard called a "blue darter." a lot smaller than a red tail, just a little bigger than a crow, and like deerwacker said, they tend to stay in the timber and zip through the trees quickly.

i have a hawk story i think is pretty cool,
i have a saddle shop and build custom saddles, tack, holsters etc. a few years ago a customer came up to pick up a saddle on thanksgiving day. i left the family dinner to meet him. on the front of my shop is a garage door which i had opened before he got there. as we were standing in the shop talkin, a red tail flew in the garage door, passed within 6 feet of us, and landed on a tall shelf at the back of the shop. we looked at each other with dropped jaws, looked at the hawk, it looked at us, preened itself for a few seconds, then flew back out the door.

 

[dennishoddy]

I live on the outskirts of Yukon and can tell you there are some, or at least one, of those around my place. Seems like when they are around you don't see any res tails or owls. Maybe they are the mack daddy of the small raptor family

The reason you don't see anything else is that the coopers hawk is a predator in the first degree.
I farm and its not unreasonable to see a dozen or so circeling the field waiting on birds to come out.j
Several surveys in Ok and Tx have proven that the coopers hawk is the #1 avian predator. They can do some serious damage to quail and pheasant populations.

 

[WhiteyMacD]

I've had freshly out of the nest baby redtails, adult redtails and kites, no coopers. In fact, the kites just, and I mean just, started coming into the area. Makes me a little sad since I think they might be pushing out my redtails.

 

[Biggsly]

We have a couple of kites that come in every year and have babies. We have one red tail that comes down and snatches the birds off of our feeder. He comes and goes. Here is a of pic I took out the front door. It is not very good because the sun light was on the window.