Sharp-shin Vs. Cooper's: Wrong Again, and Happily So

When we last left our heroine, she was flying through the air at a high rate of speed on her way to Orlando to give three talks and accompany (I won't say lead) two field trips in five days at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in beautiful balmy Florida.

I left this...this...crapola... just this morning...

for this...

don't miss huuuuuge gator with nose on shore...

with my best boyfren Liam at Blue Springs State Park, Orange City, Florida. We watched the sun go down to the gentle exhalations of about a dozen of the 300 manatees parked there in the 72 degree crystal clear water. It is a wonderful world. You can fly two winter weary people to Paradise in just under three hours. 

Just as I went to turn my phone off just after noon today, a private Facebook message came in from none other than Kenn Kaufman, field guide author (birds, mammals, butterflies), writer and naturalist supreme. I'm taking the liberty of copying it here. After a friendly salutation, he wrote:

I looked at your blog post on Accipiters this morning, and just between us, I feel uneasy about the ID. I'm not an expert but I did spend a lot of time looking at plumage characters when I was working on Advanced Birding; I never saw a Sharp-shin, in a museum or in the field or in diagnostic photos, that had such a blackish cap. Just looking at the head in your photos - the blackish cap, pale nape, mauve-gray auriculars, and position of the eyes on the face - I would have been confident in calling it a Cooper's. I know about the leg shape difference and I've tried to illustrate it in the past, but to me the bird in your photos looks inconclusive in that regard.

I didn't want to start a public debate, but I thought it would be worthwhile to contact you privately about this. If the bird is indeed a Sharp-shinned, it totally alters my concept of head pattern on the species. At the very least, it would be far from typical, and it might be good to tell people that. But I'd encourage you to look at those characteristics of head and face pattern and reconsider this bird.

I think my favorite line is "I'm not an expert..."

Nah. You're not. Then, um, who is?? I chuckled and made a few quiet squees to myself, turned off my phone, and settled into my crappy airplane seat with a happy sigh. So it's a Cooper's after all. Well, dangit, my first thought was that it was a Cooper's, but then I talked myself into sharp-shin. Go with your first gut instinct...it's rarely wrong.

And when we landed and I turned my phone back on, there was another Facebook message from none other than Keith Bildstein, Sarkis Acopian Director of Conservation Science at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Dude has seen and ID'd a few hundred thousand accipiters in his time. He wrote, 

Julie, looks like a Coops to me. White band prominent on rounded tail tip, but the relative closeness of the eye to the bill (versus the back of the head) is a dead giveaway. I hope this helps. In AZ now chasing TVs.

I. LOVE. IT. I'm leaving the original post just as it is, with a little addendum to point people to this one for, as Paul Harvey used to intone, "The Rest of the Story."  Because like paint thrown at a wall, the erroneous post has a beauty all its own. And for me, the beauty is that this is subtle stuff.  Even as I'm watching it down the last of its starling, this bird is morphing before my eyes. One moment it looks like a great big female sharpie; the next it looks like a small male Cooper's. One moment its bill looks delicate; the next a bit large for a sharp-shin. I just could not decide. And then I saw what looked like spindly legs, and I thought I had it nailed. Not so fast, Zickefoose.

photo by Diane Husic

I've been known to make a bad call from time to time. I think I was making one just last September when this photo was taken, in fact, and Keith Bildstein, who is perched on the rock above me, turned around and corrected me. Heh. Heh. It was a broadwing, and I was calling it a sharpie. Duh. Outta shape, Zickefoose? Well, on your bird ID you are. Besides. Who wears pants like THAT at South Lookout??

And it's clear from what I wrote that I was cornfused. I even  mentioned the dark cap as being atypical for a sharpie, but I didn't know it was contraindicated. 

And those spindly legs? Well, I guess it's a Cooper's with spindly legs. What do I know? Not much. Relative closeness of eye to bill? So a Cooper's hawk's eye is closer to its bill than to the back of its head? Ohh kay. Now that you say it, I guess I can see it. And I love it. Who knew? Not me. Others. 

I warned you that I was paddling around the shallow end of bird ID. And now two great big sharks have cruised in to set me straight, and I couldn't be more pleased about it.

Because for me, and for any naturalist who is driven by curiosity and the desire, above all, to get it right, the point of all this is to ferret out the truth. And the truth is out there. And I've got two nice private messages from two experts to prove it. That feels good. Knowing what the bird is feels even better.

Me and Keith at Hawk Mountain's South Lookout, September 2014

Photo by Diane Husic

Thank you, Big Sharks! It's a Cooper's hawk. Well, dip me in chocolate. 

 

The End.

Humblest thanks to Kenn Kaufman, Keith Bildstein, and gardnie 07 (comments section of the original post), all of whom set me straight and taught me a thing or five.

Hawks, Heavy Metals, and Good People

What a treat to stay with David and Diane Husic, to walk their field in Kunkletown, which is chock-full of goldenrod, with them. To be with people who have the same feelings and care for their land as we do. Who see it not as a potential cash crop of timber or something to level and scrape, but as a living thing. 

This meadow is managed for wildflowers and butterflies and those who appreciate them. There are paths winding in through the clumps of goldenrod so you can get closer to the bugs. 

Diane's looking at the Endless Mountain, the Kittatinny Ridge, as she and David do every day, in its ever- changing moods.

Walking back to the house

where David will soon be incapacitated by Zyzzy's need to nap right on his lap. Cats are good for that. And we could all use a little incapacitating now and then.

Diane and I went to Hawk Mountain to attend a luncheon for special friends of the sanctuary, and pick up a whole mess of original artwork I loaned to illustrate a beautiful new book commemorating Hawk Mountain Sanctuary's 80th anniversary. I'm excited that my paintings and drawings will grace this important book. And it's always fun working with Director Jerry Regan, the Human Tsunami!

photo (off a projection screen) by Diane Husic

photo by Diane Husic

While we were there Hawk Mountain's Sarkis Acopian Director of Conservation Sciences Keith Bildstein watched some hawks with us, and gave me a tour of their gorgeous new library, offices, labs and intern housing, also courtesy of the late, wonderful supporter, Sarkis Acopian. Wow. Hawk Mountain has certainly changed for the better since I'd been there! And the hawks still pour over.

photo by Diane Husic

I was amazed how rusty my soaring raptor ID skills had gotten. A young bald eagle hove into view, and when someone called "Osprey," I looked at it long and hard and thought, "Wow. That has a really big head for an osprey." And assumed they just knew better. Get with the program, Zick. It's every Science Chimp for himself out here on the rocks.  It was an eagle. I then completely failed to ID a broadwing with its wings reefed in until I swallowed my pride and asked Keith what it was. Um, thank you. This is me, trying. You can put binoculars on her, but don't rely on her for raptor ID's...

The fabulous Lee and Courtney Peterson were there for the meeting and Lee's talk that evening. He, being the son and spittin' image of Roger Tory Peterson. She, an amazing artist and jewelry creator.  I was playing it cool, hangin' with them; they're fun, creative and lively folks. And besides, I knew his dad.

Leaning into a distant raptor...she's cool she's cool in her fancy pants

photo by Diane Husic

But inside, I was all geekin' out at being next to some fabulous Peterson DNA once again.

The real Zick. Awful, rambunctious and shameless. Photo by Diane Husic, who knows.

Diane, loving the scenery at the South Lookout, Hawk Mountain, PA.

 I'm proud to know her. She told me the story of a huge section of the Kittatinny Ridge that was ravaged by almost a hundred years of toxic fallout (heavy metals, mostly) from a smelting plant in the Lehigh Gap just a half-hour away. The aerial fallout, tons per year, had killed all the plants and rendered it miles of rocky moonscape. Diane initiated a study of plants, determining that trees were taking up the heavy metals, which stunted and killed them. But warm-season grasses don't take them up and can grow and flourish there. So with her work, she was able to guide revegetation efforts, and the ravaged ridge is coming to vibrant life. It will probably be a savannah, studded with a few hardy trees, which opens up interesting possibilities for breeding birds, as that habitat type is very scarce. Already there are prairie warblers, and it is being colonized by blue grosbeaks, a southern species that needs this rare savannah habitat. 168 species have been counted so far!  She told me of lifelong residents of the Gap in tears, seeing that poisoned ridge greening up again, or possibly for the first time ever. Just after I left, Diane was to join the reclamation crew at Lehigh Gap Nature Center to accept an award from the EPA for their stellar work on reclaiming the largest Superfund site in the nation. Their work is only beginning, but it's hugely promising.

What an honor to stay with people who are leaving the planet a better place for their being here. One of my favorite moments was falling asleep on their couch, belly full of grilled salmon, while David, awesome musician,  Salmon Griller, Head of Chemistry and Professor at Lafayette College in Easton PA, played old-time fiddle tunes. I'd wake up at the end of each one, murmur, "What's that one called?" and then drop back off. Mmm. 

Another thrill of speaking at Lehigh Gap Nature Center and Moravian College was meeting people who had watched Corey Husic grow up, who are his mentors. It was hallowed ground for me. I think a lot of this couple and their boys (Corey's younger brother Joren is a dryly funny, brilliant jewel!)

photo by David Husic. Only a daddy could take a photo like this.

Corey at two. His favorite book? A Peterson field guide. Nooooo. The cute is killing me. Put that boy on a bun with some yaller mustard. Somehow it doesn't seem fair. I didn't get a Golden Guide to Eastern Birds until I begged for it at eight. No wonder he's so much sharper than me.

That little boy grew up, met Phoebe on Hog Island, Maine in the summer of 2012

and then a lot of other stuff happened.

Thankful.