Area Birders, Thanks to all of you who attempted to identify the mystery hawk at http://users.mikrotec.com/mayhorn/BIMG/HAWKP.htm. If you decided that it was a Sharp-shinned, then you were right. The bird is an IMMATURE FEMALE SHARP-SHINNED. The head is smaller in relation to the body than a Cooper's would be. The light supercillium is more pronounced than it is on a Cooper's, but not as conspicuous as it would be on a Goshawk. The rufous auricular (facial) patch would be darker in a Cooper's. The eye has an orange tint instead of yellow, which means the bird's eye color is changing to that of an adult. The throat is light. It would be darker in a Cooper's. The size of the hawk was what I referred to as tricky. If you imagine the length of the grackle including the tail under the hawk and compare the length of the two birds you see there is not enough of a difference between the two for this hawk to be a Cooper's and not an even larger Goshawk. Peterson lists a Common Grackle as being 11-13 1/2 in length, and a Goshawk as 20-26 inches. The hawk in these photos is not that large. The tail in the photo is a bit misleading. It probably looks longer like that of Cooper's because the wings are drooping and the rump is exposed. The tail also has the squared corners that point to a Sharp-shinned, whereas the Cooper's would be more rounded. The sub-terminal band on the tail is gray, not white, as it would be on a Cooper's, and if you look closely you can see a notch in the center of the tail, which is indicative of a Sharp-shinned. Also the rufous patch that can be seen on the wing coverts would be more pronounced in a Cooper's. I can't take credit for having caught all of these species indicators myself. Bob Riggs of Russell County lent his hawk expertise and pointed out some that I missed. Fifty people responded to the ID challenge. Here are the results: SHARP-SHINNED 20 NOR. GOSHAWK 15 COOPER'S 10 NOR. HARRIER 1 RED-TAILED 1 MERLIN 3 Thanks again to all who took part. Maybe we all improved our birding skills by a bit. Enjoy the birds, Roger Mayhorn Compton Mt Buchanan County VA ************************************************* BRISTOL BIRDS NET LIST Bristol Birds Net Photo Gallery located at: http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jwcoffeyy/album?.dir=/efd5 This is a regional birding list sponsored by the Bristol Bird Club to facilitate communications between birders and bird clubs of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. -------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to Bristol-Birds. To post to this mailing list, simply send an email to: bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe, send an email to bristol-birds-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the one word 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. -------------------------------------------------- Wallace Coffey, Moderator wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (423)764-****