jannd, I should have given the information I usually give with the picture. In most, if not all, species of the birds of prey, the female is larger then the male. Sharpie males are about 10"- females 14". Cooper's males are 14"- females 21". A 14" male Coop is the same size as a 14" female Sharpie. The side by side picture is made from pictures on the same fence with one picture manipulated to make the board the same width as the other. That makes the birds to scale to one another. As you can see, they are for all practical purposes, the same size. The real size difference is between the male Sharpie and a female Coop. We hope to get a picture of them on the fence for a side by side of all 4. Hope this is of help, Bob

Can't say what kind of hawk it is but it could be a young one that hasn't achieved adult coloration yet. Young hawks tend to be bolder than adults and that may be why you could get so close. He may also have been invading the redtail's territory and that's why they were so upset. Just a thought.

It is a immature Red-tailed Hawk. Luc

The landing of the bird near you is a bit of a concern. It shouldn't be doing this, although immatures sometimes have this inattention to external threats. This sort of thing is most often seen in hawks that have been kept illegally in captivity for a while, then released. They learn that humans aren't a real threat to them, so they hang around. In the worst cases, these birds have learned that humans provide food, so they think some food might be forthcoming. Under no circumstances ever place out any meat for this hawk. It needs to learn -- as it will sooner or later -- that it should stay away from humans. It also needs to learn to stay away from your aviary and bird feeder, too. But it's winter, and live, warm food is right there in full view, if not in full vulnerability. For a young hawk trying to make it through its first winter, this will prove to be an insurmountable attraction. The hawk may hang around all winter. But when the days start getting noticeably longer in March, it will respond to ramping migratory urges and head north. It would seem that as more and more of us buy and create rural homesites (as I did), red-tailed hawk populations ought to be threatened or declining from a lack of available habitat. But for this species (and for Cooper's hawks, too), this isn't the case. There are more red-tails alive today than probably at any other time. In presettlement times, red-tails lived only on the open edges of the primal forest (in the East). As the Eastern and Midwestern forests were openned and converted to farmland, the red-tail population expanded. Red-tails can't live in an unbroken forest. They require open land. But until the last ten or twenty years, red-tails were commonly shot or trapped in many rural areas, suppressing their populations. No longer. Very few are shot any more, and very few are trapped. The greatest problem immature red-tails have is finding an open, unoccupied nesting territory. There are now so many adult, breeding red-tails that immatures rising to adulthood frequently can't find any open habitat in which to mate (form a pair bond), build a nest, and raise young. In short, there is a housing shortage out there for red-tails. There are large numbers of experienced adults who have saturated the countryside. Your bird is not guarenteed of ever becoming a parent. For this winter, though, it's having a glorious time watching your caged animals. The hawk is only an adolescent. In a year or so, it will grow up and attempt to attend to adult matters.