by Eric Kessler
Bird ID Challenge
5:54 pm in Nature by Eric Kessler
This afternoon my daughter Rebecca observed this beautiful bird eating what appears to have been a Mourning Dove. This event occurred in our front yard in the Brookside area of Kansas City, Missouri. Even though we were on our way out the door I took the time to capture a few images, one of which is shown above.
ID the bird and identify important characteristics that distinguish this bird from other birds that it is related to. Stan or Brad will confirm your identification.
Eric, I guess I’ll “accipt” your charge to provide confirmation on the id. You’d have to have the sharp eye of James Fenimore Cooper’s character, Hawkeye to id this hawk–maybe we should just call it a ‘guess hawk’
Someone is going to have to step up and work the i.d……before Stan and I start arguing…
an accipiter; by size i would say an adult cooper’s hawk; tail looks like tipped in white (or is that snow?) but can’t tell if rounded (CH) or square(SSH); could als0 be a adult female sharp-shinned hawk : ) hard to tell size but ssh is about as big as a dove; can’t tell from picture how big it is relative to prey; head does look a bit smaller than body so possibly ssh…bird id conundrum…
A more resolute image can be viewed here:
http://www.bv229.k12.ks.us/biophilia/HawkImage.JPG
That is nice—life size on my computer. Beeeeeuuutiful.
Welcome Keleigh (from Idaho) to the KABT Bioblog and congrats on your PAEMST. You’ll be able to id this one for sure, now.
BW
going to go out on a limb ; )
and say cooper’s
btw, love the website!!
kb