accipiter and sapsuckers

Eileen Schwinn came by to help me find those pesky rails in the marsh but, although we heard a Clapper Rail call, we could not flush anything in spite of some heavy marsh sloshing in the pre-dawn light. There were some warblers and sparrows popping out of the vegetation at the marsh edge at daybreak but, except for a Winter Wren, it was mostly just the usual suspects for the season. However near the end of our walking tour, an agitation of small passerines alerted us to the possibility of raptor and a whoosh of a flyby -- at eye level -- confirmed the suspicion. We actually succeeded in following the trail of this swiftly moving accipiter and found him/her perched on a low branch above some dense shrubbery which, as the hawk was clearly convinced, contained its breakfast. It was fascinating to get such a close-up look at a large and fierce predator and watch it dive down into the shrubs, apparently always in vain. Each dive spooked one or two birds that had taken shelter in the vegetation but this deadly bird hawk (clearly a young bird by plumage and by action) could never come up with anything and eventually flew off.

Having seen it so close up it should have been easy to tell what it was, right? Wrong. The rounded head suggested Sharp-shinned but the rounded tail and the good size -- close to a foot and a half -- pointed to a Cooper's Hawk.

I thought the day was over but we tried one more circle down to the pond and, on our way back, spotted not one but two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, the first of the season for me. One was a male, the other a female and there was a clear size difference between them (bigger male). I'd have to do a little research but I don't think this size difference is mentioned in any of the common references; perhaps the smaller one was a young bird.

Eric Salzman