TROPIC and NEAR-TROPIC BIRD COLLECTION

Cooper's Hawk "Wary of Me" Cooper's Hawk- Accipiter cooperii Cooper's Hawk-Accipiter cooperii, Order FALCONIFORMES - Family ACCIPITRIDAE - Subfamily Accipitrinae. Today, I staked out the nest for about two hours. The pair has been incubating the eggs. I got very lucky and caught one of them going back to the nest with a prey item (looks like a bird). (Photo: April 16, 2004, Canon 10D, EF 400mm f/5.6L USM, 1.4x teleconverter EF ll lens, manual focus ) I first saw a pair of these remarkable raptors with my friend Mark McPhail in his backyard (heavily wooded) in Oxford, Ohio earlier in the spring. Since then, they have mated and built a nest! Today, while one bird was on the nest, the other perched a short distance away! "They hunt for prey in the woods (a True Forest Hawk) and supposedly often injure themselves. A recent study found that 23 percent of all Cooper's Hawks examined had healed fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula or wishbone. A winter resident. At the first molt, young birds frequently are bluish-grey in coloration. Length 14-20 inches." For More Species Info: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/programs/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Coopers_Hawk_dtl.html

JUMP to pg 1, pg 2, pg 3, pg 4, pg 5, pg 6, pg 7, pg 8, pg 9, pg 10, pg 11, pg 12, pg 13, pg 14, pg 15, pg 16, pg 17, pg 18

Photos Copyright R. Hays Cummins. Authorization required. For permission, contact hays@environment-education-press.org

Sources of species identification and other amazing info include (1) Cornell Lab of Ornithology--a fantastic site; (2)Birds of Eastern and Central North America, Peterson Field Guide Series, Fifth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company; (3) The National Audubon Society's Sibley Guide to Birds and (4) Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Third Edition, National Geographic, Washington, D.C.