Re: [Maine-birds] Re: hawk in our yard today (Bar Harbor 27 Jan.)

And if I use my same Blue Jay wing measuring tool from the first picture, and the photo distance is the same, the length of this bird in the second photo is close to 24" which can only be a Gos. 

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On Jan 28, 2017, at 12:06 PM, David Gulick <dvdgu741@gmail.com> wrote:

I too have thought about size relative to the Blue Jay. If you take Sibley's 16" wingspread for the Jay, each wing will be roughly 7" long plus 2" across the back of the bird. In one of the photos we see the narrow white stripe across what appear to me to be the Jay's median coverts. We also can see the white at the tips of the secondaries. So we are essentially looking at the full 7" of the Jay's wing. 

I will admit that I am puzzled by the "apparent" size of the hawk's wing. IF I am seeing this picture correctly, the "hand" of the bird is 2.25x longer than the Jay's 7" wing. 7x 2.25"=15.75", call it 16". If you say the forearms of this bird have got to be at least 6", that means there are two 22" wings plus a 3" back for a rough wingspread of 47". That's big even for a female Gos.

That said, the superciliary line is not prominent; the breast streaking is fairly coarse (sharpie-like); the back markings are not definitive (to me); there is no apparent white at the tip of the tail (Coop) although that cannot be considered conclusive; the head is "relatively" diminutive (not Coop); and the tail bands are rather irregular (Gos-like). How's that for mixed messages...

I personally think this has to be a juvie female Goshawk based on the size but I definitely do not have enough experience to recognize the face and back.  If it is indeed a Sharpie, I am misunderstanding the pictures and my measurements are completely bogus. 

Louis, Peter, Derek...help!

Thanks, David

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 28, 2017, at 9:23 AM, cathie.murray@gmail.com wrote:

Since body length of sharpies is about the same as a blue jay I asked Carol if she had other observations of the relative size of the predator and prey.  In the two pics we do see, the predator looks significantly larger than the jay but perhaps I am only seeing small jay body parts.

On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 10:20:17 PM UTC-5, Carol in Town Hill wrote:

Cathie Murray has raised the question that this bird may not be a Sharp-shinned but rather a Coopers Hawk. I am copying here my response and any comment is welcome.

We were at first thinking this was the same bird we saw 10 days ago but that is not necessarily the case. It looked like a female hawk and it is true that it was a pretty big bird. I was making my identification based on the facial pattern, white supercilium and bright yellow lores and comparing them to the Crossley ID Guide/Eastern Birds. I think I will ask the group for more opinions. 

    Thanks!  Carol

the photos are at www.acadiabirds.wordpress.com

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