This is a side by side picture of two very common hawks that can be seen, at various times, throughout the entire United States:

One is a Cooper’s Hawk, the other a Sharp-Shinned.  They look fairly similar, being both of the genus Accipiter.  Accipiters are generally defined by long tails for better maneuverability, along with long legs.  Unlike some birds of prey, they tend to be sneaky and ambush their prey, waiting in bushes or other hidden areas for smaller creatures (other birds or rodents, usually), rather than soaring from great heights and swooping down.

Can you tell which one is the coopers and which one is the sharp-shinned?

Read on…

The biggest and most obvious difference between the two birds is size.  Coopers hawks are bigger, in the 14″-20″ range, making them not that far from a crow’s size on either end.  Sharp-shinned hawks are in the 10″-14″ range, making some of them even smaller than a blue jay.

That said, size can be deceptive.  It’s not as easy to judge size in the field as people think, and even if you can, the smallest size of one bird matches the largest end of the other.  Size alone can’t give you a good ID.  There are, however, a couple other factors that are quite relevant.  

A friend of mine often says to think of the sharp-shinned as a track-star and the coopers as a football player: one’s sleeker than the other, and the “shoulders” tend to be less broad.  This is accurate in flight, but not as useful when the birds are stationary.  Furthermore, in the wintertime, birds often fluff themselves up (they can use their feathers to make pockets of heat) to keep warm, making comparisons of this nature complicated, though they do tend to work in flight.

I, however, use two specific things to help me tell the difference between the two birds: tail and belly.

First, let’s look at the sharp-shinned, the smaller of the two:

There are two things on this bird which immediately tell me it’s a sharpie: first, the feather pattern: there are patches of white on the stomach.  This doesn’t happen with coopers hawks.  They’ve got color all the way down.  

Second, the tip of the tail.  Notice how it’s shaped: it’s almost flat: no curve to it whatsoever.

Now let’s look at the coopers with those same concepts in mind:

Again, notice the belly: color all the way down– no patches of white until the legs themselves.  

Now notice the tail: rounded and well curved, like a semicircle.  

Related links:

• Coopers Hawk photos


• Sharp-shinned hawk photos

Hope you enjoyed the hawk lesson!