I received one reply with some guidance and have gone back and forth on a final determination. I have landed (or shall I swooped in) on Coopers. Final factors were:
- probably can't count on the tail feathers actually being rounded since they were folded in perched position - length was more on the 14+" .., more in the Coopers range - Though the head did not appear "large", it was more pronounced than the pics I've seen for Sharpies - Body structure was more barrel-shaped I found the following web page helpful: http://feederwatch.org/learn/tricky-bird-ids/coopers-hawk-and-sharp-shinned-hawk/ Ron Bolton Berthoud On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 11:30:01 AM UTC-7, ronbco wrote: > > The pair landed just off my back porch in my rural home west of Berthoud. > I did not have in my brain the differentiation factors for Sharpies, > Coopers and Merlins for the 20 seconds before they left. > In studying afterwards I am pretty sure they were Sharpies because the > tail feathers, when perched, did not show any rounding (uniform length > across the feathers of the tail). > They certainly seemed more "chubby" than the descriptions of Merlins. > From looking at ebird sitings in the area and the frequency counts it is > hard to make a judgment. > > Opinions? > > Ron Bolton > Berthoud > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/f458c36a-2950-424a-ab45-5528127ee5f3%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
