One of the things I do as a volunteer with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory is giving banding talks as part of our docent program. We bring one of the recently banded hawks up and give visitors a chance to see a bird of prey for a few minutes, talk a little bit about its role in the world, then we release it to continue its journey. It's a great experience - raptors are pretty cool creatures, but most of us never get the chance to see a wild one up close and personal. Kids love it, of course, but adults get pretty excited too.
We never know which bird(s) we'll have for the talk until just before we head up to the platform - it's determined solely by the hawks themselves, whoever is trapped and banded closest to the time of the talk. Sometimes it's a big ol' redtail (everyone's idea of what a hawk looks like), sometimes it's something exotic like a harrier or a merlin. Most often, it's an accipiter because they're the bread-and-butter of our operation during the peak months when we're doing the talks. When the accipiter is a Cooper's Hawk, especially a big feisty female, people are duly impressed. But when it's a Sharp-shinned Hawk, especially a male, there's almost always someone who says:
That little thing is a hawk??
If there's any doubt in your mind, just ask a warbler.
I'm getting an early start this morning since it's my "peak" banding weekend and we're starting a little earlier than usual. I've also got a fellow bander staying here, so I can't spend much time with the diary until the end of the day. I know you'll keep yourselves amused...
Sharpies are great little hawks. In the Bay Area, they're migratory and wintering birds - the nearest breeders are in the mountains. Migrants begin showing up in August, and the last of them don't leave until April (sometimes even May), so we don't have to go too long without them.
Who's trying to remain inconspicuous?
Once they show up, the most common way that most people encounter them is in their backyards, at the feeder. They're not going for the seed, of course. If you've got a bird feeder, it might operate in more than one sense of the term.
Oh, look! A feeder.
I just love these guys. (and gals) They are tiny, but fearsome predators nonetheless. As adults, they've honed their hunting skills and often specialize in certain types of prey. As kids, though, sometimes their eyes are bigger than their stomachs. One of my favorite stories was from someone who was driving into the Headlands for their day of banding, and encountered a sharpie essentially riding a brush rabbit across the road. The bird caught the bunny fair and square, and wasn't inclined to let go just because it was outweighed 4-to-1.
With one magnificent sweep of my wing, I mantle my prey so you do not know if I'm hiding a sparrow or a bunny.
Sharpies account for roughly a third of the birds we band at GGRO, so I'm fortunate to be able to stare into their eyes regularly in the fall. And what cool eyes they are...
Descriptions of sharpies sometimes refer to them as bug-eyed. Well, that sounds a little harsh. But their eyes do "pop" a bit - I think it's because they don't have the heavy brow structure of a Coop or a redtail - though they do sometimes have the great curling eyebrows of Gaelic ancestors.
I don't know if it's this way on the east coast, but on the west coast, a lot of our juvenile sharpies could be mistaken for adults if you're only getting a glance at the front. In Cooper's Hawks (the other accipiter that's fairly common in most areas), it's really easy to tell when you're looking at the bird's ventral (front) side - kids have brown streaks, adults have rufous barring. That's generally the rule for sharpies, but some of the birds have a lot of pattern and color on the ventral side and give you reason for a double take.
The bird above is a juvenile but the color on her breast is pretty similar to the adult above her. The pattern is a different, and of course the back is brown and scalloped like a typical juvenile accipiter. On adult accipiters, the back is grey - deep slate grey on males, a warmer, earthier grey on females. In the photo below, the bird at right (the smallest one) is an adult male, and the two on the left are adult females.
This photo was from a few years ago, when we had the fun moment of having three adult sharpies in the blind at one time. Another photo of the trio is below - the bird on the left is a second-year female, meaning she's just recently become an adult bird. Her eyes are still in the transition between the yellow of a juvenile bird and the red of an older adult. The middle bird is also a female, and she's "After Second Year" meaning she's been an adult for at least two years, possibly more. (We look at details of their plumage to determine age.) The red in her eyes has deepened with age. The male sharpie is the bird on the right, and we couldn't get enough clues from his plumage to age him beyond saying that he was an adult bird.
As it turned out, Saturday was not ideal trapping weather, so I'm still waiting on that first sharpie of the season. Wish me luck that this four-ounces-of-fury predator shows up on Sunday.