Sharp-shinned Hawk

The Sharp-shinned Hawk is the smallest North American Hawk and hunts almost strictly birds but sometimes takes small mammals. Like the two other North America accipiter species, Cooper’s Hawk and Goshawk, they spend most of their time hunting in woodlots and forests where their stout wings, long slender legs and tail and keen eye-site help them sneak up on unsuspecting song birds. It breeds from central Alaska, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories just south of the Beaufort Sea and in parts of all the Canadian provinces with the exception of Nova Scotia. They winter and are year round residents of most of the US and Central America. Because of their wide range and adaptability they are one of the more common North American Hawks.

Adult Male (spring/summer)

Small rounded head with gray cap, which continues down nape, light lores, brownish auriculars and red eyes. Breast, belly and flanks have orange and white barring. Undertail coverts white. Back, rump, uppertail coverts and wings gray. Tail gray with black barring.

Adult Female (spring/summer)

Larger. Back, rump, uppertail coverts, wings and tail more brownish than male.

Juvenile

Juveniles are brown backed with course brown streaking on their breasts and underneath their wings. They have dark brown bands on their tail and a yellowish iris.

General:

The smallest Accipiter with long tail and short rounded wings. Length: 24-34cm. Wing 43-56cm. Weight: 87-218grams.

Behaviour:

Sharp-shinned Hawks hunt on the wing; flying through thickets or bellow the horizon to surprise they’re pray. They are often perched part way up large trees in an erect position. They are not often seen perched on telephone poles, electrical wires, or at the top of trees like other hawk species, but instead spend their time lower down in trees and bushes to avoid being seen by their pray or larger predators.

Habitat:

The Sharp-shinned Hawk is a bird of forests and forest edges and not found where trees are scarce or scattered except during migration when they can be found hunting in many different habitats: Woodlots, city parks, coniferous forests, deciduous forests, farm land, riverbanks, tropical rainforests, and many other suitable areas that can supply them with enough songbirds and small mammals to survive.

Information:

The Sharp-shinned Hawk is a small, scrappy, compact raptor. Anything that wears feathers and is in the bantamweight class is eligible as prey. Although the hawk may take prey as large as Common Flickers, they usually prefer passerines the size of warblers and finches. In the hunting mode, the ‘Sharpy’ maneuvers deftly through woodlands, following the contours of hedgerows and moving quickly in and out of breaks in the foliage as it searches for prey. This hawk was once called a “harmful” species because it eats the small “beneficial” songbirds, but ecologists now know that the Sharp-shinned can take some of the surplus of small birds as they have always done. The nest is built of sticks, twigs, lined with strips of bark, about 2ft across in crotch or on branch next to trunk, usually in conifer 10-60ft high. A new nest is usually built each year. Occasionally uses old crow or squirrel nests adding fresh material. The clutch is 4-5 white, botched with browns eggs.

Similar species:

Cooper’s Hawk, Merlin.

Conservation Status:

Listed as Least Concern. North American populations appear to be stable and have increased since the ban on DDT and other pesticides.

Capture Rates:

Sharp-shinned Hawk capture occurs during migration when it forages in the open woodlands, wood edges and surrounding residential areas of the Colony Farm banding station. These raptors are not caught during the breeding season (June and July) as they breed deep in large stands of deciduous, conifer and mixed pine woodlands. However, capture rates peak during the fall and winter corresponding to juvenile dispersal.

Molt Summary:

Complex Basic Strategy (CBS): One inserted molt in the first cycle and no inserted molts in the definitive cycles.

Preformative molt (PF): Previously referred to as “first prebasic molt” but now considered a unique inserted molt within the first cycle.

CBS. PF absent-limited, PB2 (Second Prebasic Molt) incomplete-complete (Apr-Aug in non-breeding SYs), DPB (Definitive Prebasic Molt) incomplete-complete (May-Oct in breeding AHYs).

DPBs can be incomplete, scattered wing covs and rump feathers, 1-6 ss and (rarely) 1-2 rects retained. females average more feathers replaced than males.

Measurements:

F: Wing chord: >183mm; Tail >143mm

M: Wing chord: <183mm; Tail <143mm

This HY male in October is showing a dull yellow iris.

This SY female in May is showing a yellow iris with feint orange tinge.

This SY male in May is showing a yellowish orange iris.

This HY male wing in September is showing distinct rufous fringing to all of the wing coverts and rufous fringing to the remiges (primaries and secondaries).

This HY male wing in October is showing distinct rufous and buffy fringing to all of the wing coverts and pale fringing to the remiges (primaries and secondaries).

This SY female wing in April is also showing pale rufous and buffy fringing to the wing coverts and pale fringing to the remiges (primaries and secondaries).

This HY male in September is showing the uniformly narrower, more pointed and paler rectrices than the basic rectrices of adult (AHY/ASY) birds.

Notice the 4 distinct, narrow dark bands and rufous edging to the uppertail coverts visible in this photo.

Upperparts uniformly grayish in females to slaty-blue in males, the feathers without pale fringing; underparts and underwing covs reddish and generally patterned in bars.

Iris orangish to reddish.

This AHY male in April is showing slaty-blue upperparts and an orangish iris.

The wing of the AHY male in April immediately above is showing pale fringing to the lesser coverts and definitive basic plumage with little wear to the feathers.