Sharp Shinned Hawk

Photograph taken by on Saturday, February 20, 2016
Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus)

Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus)

Cathy and I were at her mom’s house today, doing various things around the house and in the yard. One thing was to cut up a largish branch that had come down in the minor snow storm we had on Monday. While I was out in the yard, I heard a hawk cry as it circled overhead.

When it landed in a tree in the back yard, I hurried to the car, put my 70-300mm zoom lens on my camera and managed to get five images before it took off again. The full frame images were horizontally oriented and this image is cropped from that, so it’s considerably less than the full frame, which accounts for softness of the image.

Brother George confirmed my identification of this as a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) and went on to say that it was a first-year juvenile. For those of you who make comments to me about my labeling of plants and animals, I want you to know that in general I get expert advice before labeling any bird picture (with a few easy exceptions). In the past that often meant dad and Albert. Now that all falls to George.

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