2023 11 25

Prone for Cooper¶

2023-11-25

After 6 months with no blog post, I will be sharing a Cooper's Hawk encounter in my backyard. For the past few weeks, there's been a hawk stalking our bird feeder at least once a day (hawks have to eat too). Usually, it will hang out below flower bushes where it can see the bird feeder but stay relatively out of sight.

Based on the size, we decided it was a Cooper's Hawk instead of the very similar Sharp-shinned Hawk. Cooper's Hawks tend to be about the size of a American Crow, while Sharp-shinned Hawks are about the size of a Blue Jay. Otherwise, they are almost identical and often hard to differentiate.

The hawk tends to come later in the day when the sun would no longer illuminate my yard, making photographs difficult. Today, the hawk came early in the morning and stood where the sun was just shining over my house. I decided to take this opportunity to get a photo of the hawk while it hunted.

The best angle for photos is usually to be eye-level with the bird and since this was a short hawk, my best option was to crawl prone across my yard and hope it did not spot me. The mornings are already cold enough that the grass is covered in frost so this meant I was essentially crawling across a giant ice cube that soaked my clothing through. Despite looking in my direction several times, the hawk either did not see me or ignored me. At one point I thought it was going to go for a Dark-eyed Junco that landed nearby but it just gave it a mean stare and never pounced on it. After about 20 minutes, the hawk leaped from the ground onto our fence and soon after flew away. That was the closest I have ever gotten to a hawk with a good angle for photographs. It was worth crawling across a giant ice cube in almost-freezing weather to have this experience.

Locations/Sightings¶

-> #location/Home-Clark-NJ