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Cooper’s Hawk is the light-colored bird at the top of the tree
Closer look at the hawk. You can see the long tail.
Yesterday and today there was another Cooper’s Hawk perched up at the top of the Sequoia tree in our backyard. The tree is about 50 to 60 feet tall so I had to use binoculars to identify the bird. This hawk appeared to be smaller than the bird I described previously (that looked like a paper bag up in the tree).
This hawk gave a repeated call that sounded like a low wheezing caw. The call was not the high pitched screech you often hear from birds of prey. Several Black-Headed Grosbeaks have visited our backyard bird feeders this spring and I thought the wheezing caw sound was coming from the grosbeaks. I usually hear this call when the grosbeaks are around so I attributed the low wheezing caw to them.
Back to the Cooper’s Hawk. The bird sat at the top of the tree for several minutes and then opened its wings slightly and dropped down into our neighbor’s yard as if using a parachute. These hawks are long-tailed woodland raptors with rounded wings adapted for hunting among the trees.
Saturday afternoon we had a huge Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) sitting at the very top of one of the Sequoia trees in our backyard. This is a picture of a Cooper’s Hawk but not the exact hawk that I saw in our tree.
When I looked out the sliding glass door from our kitchen to the backyard it looked like the wind had blown a brown paper bag into the top branches of a tree. How strange!
I grabbed the binoculars to get a closer look and low and behold the paper bag turned into a Cooper’s Hawk! After a few seconds I saw the hawk turn its head and I could see its large beak. I figured out that I was looking at the fluffy-feathered breast of the large bird. My husband and I watched the bird for a few minutes and then it flew away.
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Yesterday was an extraordinary bird watching day for me! Even though the Project Feederwatch bird count season is over, I continue to fill one of my feeders for spring and summer birds.
I had three male Black-headed Grosbeaks and one female Black-headed Grosbeak visit my feeder yesterday. I originally thought there was one male bird and one female bird until I saw three male birds late yesterday afternoon. Black-headed Grosbeaks are common here during the breeding season.
A Spotted (Rufous-sided) Towhee was hopping around and scratching under the feeder. This species of bird is ground foraging and is found in our area year round. The Spotted Towhee has similar coloration to the Black-headed Grosbeak and a bird watching novice might mistake one bird for the other. However, a closer look would reveal the differences. The Grosbeak has a light-colored thick over-sized bill used for cracking the shells of seeds, while the spotted Towhee has a dark-colored slender bill. The Grosbeak is a stocky cumbersome bird. The Spotted Towhee has a slender body with an up-tilted tail. It hops around scratching among the dead leaves.
A White-breasted Nuthatch, a year round resident of our area, was eating seeds at a hanging feeder. During the winter they are often seen eating suet. The Nuthatch eats insects and seeds and is often seen climbing head down on a tree trunk.
A Black Phoebe, also a year round resident of this area, was picking up pieces of coco fibers from the deck. The Phoebe is a flycatcher and eats mainly flying insects. They do not visit the seed feeders but are occasionally seen in the yard.
Other usual visitors were Oak Titimouse, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Housefinch, California Towhee, Mourning Dove, Steller’s Jay, and Western Scrub Jay .
Enter the Funky Nests Challenge!
Dear Birding Friend,
You find them in hanging flower baskets…an old boot…a garage shelf…or under a bridge…birds build nests in the strangest places! That’s the theme for the newest environmental challenge from our Celebrate Urban Birds project: Funky Nests in Funky Places! As you may know, Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round citizen-science project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, focused on birds in neighborhood settings.
For the Funky Nests in Funky Places challenge, we want you to take photos, do a painting, write a story, or shoot a video showing a bird’s nest built in some out-of-the-way or out-of-this-world place.When observing nests please be sure to avoid touching them or disturbing the birds.
This one’s going to be fun, I think. We usually receive hundreds of entries for each of our challenges, and I can’t wait to see what your sent us this time and where birds have chosen to build their funky nests! I’m also attaching a PDF flier about the challenge you can print for yourself or pass along to others who might want to participate.
We have some great prizes, includig a Leica C-LUX 3 compact camera, bird feeders, shrubs for planting, and more. The first 50 entrants will receive a copy of the “Doves and Pigeons” poster by Julie Zickefoose and we’ll post selected images and videos on the Celebrate Urban Birds website.
Here’s how to enter:
1. Email your entry to urbanbirds@cornell.edu . Links are acceptable for videos.
2. Write “Funky Nests” in the subject line.
3. Include your name and mailing address.
4. Explain why you submitted your entry–what’s the story behind it?
5. One entry per person, please.
Deadline for entries is July 31, 2009
Visit the Celebrate Urban Birds website for more information and to read the terms of agreement regarding all entries.
Thanks for taking the challenge!
Sincerely,
Karen Purcell, Project Leader
(607) 254-2455
urbanbirds@cornell.edu
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a membership institution dedicated to interpreting and conserving the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. Visit the Lab’s web site at www.birds.cornell.edu .
