Sharp-shinned Hawk

The Sharp-shinned Hawk is a very impressive hunter of almost entirely small birds! Perhaps you’ve seen one as you stood at your window, watching an array of small birds feeding at your feeder: suddenly the birds fly off helter-skelter! A small hawk flashes in, turns abruptly, extends its long legs forward and grabs a songbird right off its perch!

You can rest assured that these birds pose no threat to songbird populations.  Hawks capture and kill what is easiest to catch, usually birds that are sick, injured or weak.

Sharp-shinned Hawks are small, slightly larger than a robin and about 10 – 13 inches.  The sexes look similar, slate blue above, white below with rich, rusty cross-barring, the females being slightly larger.  Short, broad, rounded wings and a long, thin tail enable this hawk to be very fast and agile.  Before neighborhoods encroached, the Sharp-shinned Hawk lived in forests or edges of woods from coast to coast and from the northern tree limit to savannas of southern states.  Today many of these hawks have adapted to suburban living.

Their call can be heard near the nest, a “ke-ke-ke-ke.”  The monogamous couple construct a broad and flat twiggy platform in a dense cone-bearing tree.  The female lays four or five eggs, and the young fledge after two months.