Date: 4/4/24 2:53 pm From: PAUL ROBERTS <phawk254...> Subject: [Arlington Birds] Small Packages: A Male Sharp-shinned Hawk
Two days ago I was out birding at dawn. It was heavily overcast, so the light was terrible and I saw little. As I was walking to my car, I saw a relatively small bird in the top of a deciduous tree near my car. It piqued my curiosity because it looked a bit odd. Something about it reminded me of Merlin, but it was smaller than a Merlin. I at first thought it might be a Blue Jay, or even smaller than a jay. It had a small round head, somewhat like a Merlin, and when seen better was clearly not a jay. It was so dark that I used my megazoom camera at about 100x to get a better view, looking at it at 6400 ISO and opening the aperture a full two stops to get more light. It was an accipiter. Large white blotches on its upper wings, and a moderately long (bot not very long), straight-edged tail, with no terminal white band. Clearly, it had to be a sharpie, but it had to be one of the smallest sharpies I've ever seen perched. I got poor views of the back of the bird in awful light before I gambled the bird wouldn't fly and walked around the tree to image the breast and belly (and actually got the face as well). Very finely streaked, more like a juvenile male Cooper's Hawk than a sharpie, but streaked on the breast and belly, much more like a sharpie than a Cooper's (some of which are streaked on the belly). I was amazed that I was able to get "decent" photos of the bird to document it. The photos were actually better than what I saw through my electronic view finder. This bird was special. About 20 years ago while hawk watching at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, Connecticut, to look for more Cooper's Hawks, I saw many very small Sharp-shinned Hawks. More tiny sharp shins on a very windy day than I had ever seen in Massachusetts in an entire season hawk watching at Wachusett or Watatic, or Plum in spring. They were getting badly bounced around, so it was easy to pick them out from the female sharpies. They had to watch out because female Cooper's can literally eat male sharpies for lunch (hold the mayo). The male Sharp-shinned Hawk is our smallest diurnal raptor. (Male kestrels can be 8 inches long, with the smallest male sharpies coming in at 9 inches. Wingspan for male sharpshins and kestrels is 20-22 inches, with the differentiator being body mass. The smallest sharpshin reported at 3.0 ounces while the smallest male kestrel was 3.4 ounces.) It dawned on me after a while that I was seeing so many diminutive males at Lighthouse not because male sharpies were reluctant to fly north of the Mass Pike but because they were reluctant to get blown about flying over the summit of Wachusett and to increase their vulnerability to larger female Cooper's and originally perhaps goshawks. Instead, like many kestrels, they fly around the shoulders of the mountain, just above the canopy, which gives them close cover from potential predators and a chance to catch themselves a meal while migrating. Often you will see a flock of migrating Blue Jays suddenly dive into the canopy because one thinks it has seen a hungry Cooper's coming in. Male sharpies often react similarly. The spring sharpie flight at Plum is very uneven, but we've seen a few clear small males migrating north in good years. Again, I expect it's a reluctance to venture out to coastal land traps, especially in strong winds, where they might just as likely be a meal as find one. Hug the canopy a few miles inland. Play it safe, and maybe find a meal yourself instead of becoming someone else's meal. I've seen photos of sharpies that are clear males near bird feeders but never near mine, which is patrolled by Cooper's Hawks. Sharpshins, especially males, are very shy hunters and do not like to be watched, including by humans. Male sharpshins are very aware of their vulnerability and therefore much more secretive. It seemed appropriate that I saw this one on a dark cloudy, morning when nothing much else was around. Best, Paul Paul M. Roberts Medford, MA <phawk254...>
