Look Up

A delayed post, but Week 11 has passed and we're starting in the heat of raptor migration. Though with only 39 submissions in the Friday through Thursday period, it's not exactly the number I was hoping for. Though we successfully added two new species to the list, Merlin and Barn Owl, so we've now seen 25 out of the 35 expected species in the project's perimeters.

The observation of the week goes to @davedrum for a photo of a juvenile Cooper's Hawk in Pend Oreille County, Washington. I'm sure we're all familiar with how hard it is to identify this species due to similarity with the Sharp-shinned Hawk. Though I don't have to the time to do a thorough in-depth discussion into the id, I do think it's crucial to note that Cooper's are more human-tolerate than Sharp-shinned. While the former hunts and nests in residential areas, Sharp-shinned are really secretive and don't like to be bothered by people too much. That also means that when it comes to identifying photos on here, most Accipiters peter out to Cooper's. You can see the photo here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/134448967

We still have two weeks of September left. Go out and find some migrating hawks. I went up to Elkhorn Mountains twice in an eight-day period and was delighted to see my local mountains has a hawk flyway. It's only a matter of time before I get something good.

Publicado el 19 de septiembre de 2022 por birdwhisperer