Sharpshinned Hawk

You all know I’m a birdwatcher and I particularly love visits from my neighborhood raptors. Today I had the privilege to observe a male (I think) Sharpshinned Hawk devour a robin that it caught in the yard. I think this is the same hawk that we got pix of a few months ago when he was a juvenile. Hawks are very difficult to identify because they look completely different from juvenile to adult and several species look very similar, such as the Sharpshinned and the Cooper’s hawks. The sexes look the same but the females are typically bigger than the males. In the Sharpie’s case, the females are about twice the size of the males, which is why I believe this one is a male. It wasn’t much bigger than a crow.

He is eating a Robin. These shots were all taken at full zoom (40x), which shows how awesome this Canon really is.