Look what we caught today!

This beautiful adult female Cooper's Hawk flew into the net as Mattie was untangling some thrushes. Luckily, she reached it in time before it escaped.

 

Just look at that huge wingspan! Female Cooper's Hawks can have wingspans of 79 to 87 cm, or 31 to 34 inches. Her wing chord is 238cm, which is the distance from the bend of the wing (the wrist) to the tip of her longest primary feather (measured when the wing is bent). 

 

To give you an idea of how big this is, a white-throated sparrow's wing chord is generally about 70cm, with a wingspan of around 23cm, or 9 in. A ruby-crowned kinglet generally has a wing chord of around 55cm, and a wingspan of 16 to 18cm, or 6.3 to 7.1 in . 

 

 

Check out those talons and that curved beak! With hawks, it's not as much the beak you have to watch out for but the talons. When they hunt, it's the feet that do the grabbing and killing. The beak is just for eating. I imagine that lovely hook on the end helps with ripping apart the small mammals, lizards, amphibians, and insects that comprise an ideal Cooper's Hawk diet.

 

Mattie with the prize catch of the day

Of course we all had to take turns holding her. That's really why we band birds, for the photo opportunities!

Amy with the Cooper's Hawk

We didn't put a band on her because we don't have bands big enough. Female Cooper's Hawks are larger than males, and they take size 5 bands. The largest bands we have are size 3. As we mostly deal with warblers and sparrows, which take size 0 and 1 bands, we really don't have need for larger sizes. Except for the one day a season we catch something huge, like today!

Lauren's turn.