Cooper's Hawk
Accipiter cooperii

The Cooper's hawk is longer and leaner than the similar-looking sharp-shinned hawk. Adults have blue-gray backs and rusty barring on their underparts. A blackish crown contrasts strongly with the back. Immature Cooper's hawks have whitish or buffy underparts with fine dark streaking restricted to the chest. The rounded tail appears disproportionately long. It is crossed with four or more obscure black bars and has a broad, distinctly white tip. The sexes are similar in appearance, but the female is larger in size. Like all accipiters (a genus of small hawks with short wings and long tails), the Cooper's hawk flies with several quick wing beats and a glide.

Syllables:   Coop-ers   hawk
Pronunciation:   ku  pErs   hawk

NOTES

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The Cooper's Hawk, Accipiter cooperii
is a medium-sized hawk.

Adults have short broad wings and a long round-ended tail with dark bands. They have a dark cap, blue-grey upperparts and white underparts with red bars. They have red eyes and yellow legs. Adult females are much larger. This bird is somewhat larger than a Sharp-shinned Hawk, but smaller than a Northern Goshawk. It appears long-necked in flight.

Their breeding habitat is forested areas across southern Canada, the United States  and northern Mexico. They build a stick nest in a large tree.

In most of the United States, they are permanent residents. Northern birds migrate to the southern U.S. and Mexico.

These birds surprise and capture small and medium-sized birds from cover or while flying quickly through dense vegetation. They also eat small mammals such as squirrels, sometimes lizards, frogs, snakes and large insects. They often pluck the feathers off their prey on a post or other perch.

This bird was named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the New York Museum of Natural History.

Category: Hawks

Cooper's Hawk

Scientific classification

Kingdom:  Animalia
Phylum:   Chordata
Class:   Aves
Order:   Falconiformes
Family:   Accipitridae
Genus:   Accipiter
Species:  A. cooperii

Binomial name
Accipiter cooperii