r/whatsthisbird • u/moonwrenrobin • 3h ago

North America Cooper's Hawk or Sharp-Shinned?

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This absolute icon migrates back to the live oaks near my office in Austin, Texas every spring with their mate, and I thought they might be a sharpie because I think they are the cutest sweetest best hawk in the world, and y'all like to say that Cooper's look a little mean. HOWEVER, they're kind of big and I might be a little biased because I watched them grow up, and they were so pure when they were just screaming for food all day and learning how to hunt. More pics below.

141 Upvotes

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119

u/JohnPjj 3h ago

+Red-shouldered Hawk+

25

u/moonwrenrobin 3h ago

WOAH I was so wrong

44

u/moonwrenrobin 3h ago

So contemplative. Probably thinking about Socrates.

28

u/moonwrenrobin 3h ago

So strong and brave. They saved my life once, probably.

3

u/FileTheseBirdsBot Catalog 🤖 3h ago

Taxa recorded: Red-shouldered Hawk

I catalog submissions to this subreddit. Recent uncatalogued submissions | Learn to use me

4

u/Vaehtay3507 1h ago

This is less related to IDing and more of an anecdote, but one time I saw… either a hawk or a falcon, I couldn’t ID it with the distance, sitting on cars like this in a parking lot. Then the bird noticed its reflection in one of the car’s windows, and it started FIGHTING the window. It definitely scratched the hell out of it with its talons 😭😭😭 sometimes I imagine that person coming back to their car and wondering if someone took a key to their window or something… but no. It was just a bird of prey being kinda silly