this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
596 points (98.5% liked)

aww

20120 readers
70 users here now

A place with minimal rules for stuff that makes you go awww! Feel free to post pics, gifs, or videos of cats, dogs, babies, or anything cute and remember to be kind to others.

AI posts must be labeled [AI] in the title and are limited to one per week.

While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by instance-wide rules: https://mastodon.world/about

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

That’s definitely not a sharp-shinned hawk. Looks like a buteo of some sort but I’m not the best at hawk ID. Maybe a red-tail. They can have so many different color morphs I am never sure though.

Sharp-shinned hawk is much smaller and has different coloration.

[–] MrBojangles5342 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Is it not a red-tailed hawk? They are extremely common across North America.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

That’s what I think it is, just didn’t want to be overconfident.

[–] Anticorp 2 points 4 months ago

Look at the 5th picture in the carousel here:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sharp-shinned_Hawk/id

It sure looks like one to me. We have one staking out our bird feeder in the backyard, and we're pretty upset about that.

Some of the red tailed hawks look similar too. I guess that I just don't know!

[–] Anticorp 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Whoops, I replied to the wrong comment, although that's part of the same chain. You can see it here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Look at the size and body proportions. Very different species. Coloration varies quite a bit as you can see but sharp-shins are small and fragile looking since they’re built for agility. Larger hawks are a lot bulkier.

About 75% it’s a red-tailed hawk, and if not, another species in genus Buteo. They generally don’t eat small songbirds like the one pictured.

[–] Anticorp 2 points 4 months ago

Oh, then maybe that's not a sharp-shinned in our tree either. I just used Google Lens and pictures to try to identify it.