ID this bird!!

Big Al1

Saw this little guy in the side yard enjoying a meal of bird!! Don't know what he is, to small for an Osprey!


Sorry for the dark image, he was in a shadow and I was in the house, didn't want to spook him!!

JKP

Maybe a Cooper's Hawk. 

Linefinder

JKP said:

Maybe a Cooper's Hawk. 

Yep. Commonly called a chicken hawk.

Mike

Gene L

Cops have a different context for the term "Chicken Hawk."

Big Al1

Coopers Hawk!! That's the little guy, cool bird!!

Jayhawker

Another confirmation...it's a Coppers Hawk...they used to hang around our bird feeders in KS...when they would hit a dove there would be an explosion of feathers...

jbp-ohio

Henery grew up......

tennmike

Gene L said:

Cops have a different context for the term "Chicken Hawk."

As a VN veteran, you should also know the term applies to something entirely different than your reference.

And to the OP, yeah, Cooper's Hawk. Those things see bird feeders as an all you can eat buffet. Maximum food available with minimum effort. Cool raptors, for sure!

Big Al1

The remains!! I think squab was on the menu!!

sakodude

watched a local Redtail hawk do the same to a Dove. Swooped down from my roof and grabbed a dove at the feeder. Didn't even leave feathers.Only remnant was the skull. 

Make_My_Day

We have an abundance of hawks around my area, and have seen what's left of a bird one of them has devoured at least a few times.

Gene L

When I lived in Raleigh, I kept finding a circle of feathers in my back yard from time to time and didn't know what made them.  My backdoor native fed pigeons (yes, you didn't read that wrong, she FED pigeons) and one day the mystery was settled.  I think it was a red-tail, but it hit that pigeon so hard it de-feathered it in the mystery circle of feathers I'd seen in the past.  I didn't see it strike the pigeon, but did see the hawk eat it.

I guess my back yard was like a fast food source for hawks.

Linefinder

We have a nesting pair of Coopers that have returned to the same nest in our front yard for the past 4 years. You don't hear much out of them until they have babies, then they don't shut up from dawn till dusk. The young are fun to watch while learning to fly.  This year, one almost hit me in the head while its sibling crashed into our front bay window.

A couple years ago, I fed one a hot dog while it was perched upon my wifes Jeep. They don't seem scared of humans, which is a good thing. Even on the young, those talons are huge.

Mike