BIRD OF THE MONTH - Cooper’s Hawk

September 2026 - Cooper’s Hawk

Among the bird world’s most skillful fliers, Cooper’s Hawks are common woodland hawks that tear through tree canopies in high speed pursuit of other birds. Look for their flap-flap-glide flight and long tail typical of accipiters as they zero in on these birds. Even when crossing large open areas they rarely flap continuously.

With their smaller lookalike, the Sharp-shinned Hawk, they make for famously tricky identifications. Both species are sometimes unwanted guests at bird feeders, looking for an easy meal. Once thought averse to towns and cities, they are now fairly common there as cities provide plenty of prey.

A Cooper's Hawk captures a bird with its feet and kills it by repeated squeezing. Falcons tend to kill their prey by biting it, but Cooper’s Hawks hold their catch away from the body until it dies. Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous lifestyle.

In a study of over 300 Cooper’s Hawk skeletons, 23 percent showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the wishbone. Collisions with human-made objects (windows, cars) causes 70% of deaths in urban areas.

Adults are steely blue-gray above with warm reddish bars on the underparts and thick dark bands on the tail. The most common call is a loud grating cak-cak-cak 2-5 seconds long. Short to medium-distance migrant, Cooper’s Hawks can be found wintering over most of the continental United States.

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