Falcon or Hawk?

This week a friend emailed me looking for help with identifying a bird that had fatally struck her window here in Vernon. Now this friend has a massive heart for all creatures no matter their circumstance or condition and so my initial thought was poor girl. But it seemed from her email that the best way I could help, was to attempt to solve her curiosity as to what exactly the bird was.

"I think it's a Kestrel, but having trouble identifying it...It's about 12 inches long and mostly gray. Her / his underside...mostly brown and white. A lovely bird." was all that I thought I had to go on. I decided to search "Birds of VT" , I chose iNaturalist from the sites that came up and sent that to her hoping for a match. I also asked if she could send me a photograph. As it happened, she flagged me down on my walk and said none of the birds on the site had seemed a right match. I noted from her photograph that the bird was a raptor, had a hooked beak and a long tail with pronounced banding. My friend wondered if it could be a Merlin, but It also seemed that the bird's wings were broader than a falcon's. She also pointed out that the bird appeared greenish around its beak.

I don't know about my readers, but I find raptors particularly difficult to tell apart, so I decided to reach out to my daughter Helen who is an Avian Technician working in coastal and seabird bird conservation. I sent her a picture of the bird and within minutes she sent me the answer. Some things seem hardly fair, like when someone comes up within minutes, what you and a friend had been trying to do for the better part of a day.  Helen advised that I tell my friend that it is illegal to keep any part of the bird. I didn't see that as a problem, as knowing her, she had already given it a respectful and proper burial.

Now that we had the bird's identity, it was time to figure out what the heck it was doing in a wooded area in Vernon. As it turns out, the Sharp-shinned Hawk is perfectly at home here, but it hasn't had an easy time of it. According to Vermont Fish and Wildlife Rare and Uncommon Animals of Vermont, on a scale of S1 (very rare) to S5 (very common), its conservation status is S3B, S3N.  The Vermont Center for Ecostudies reports, "Population continues to rebound due to protection from shooting, banning of some pesticides..."  Those two sites can seem rather complicated for us novice birders, so I am including a more generic reader friendly article on the Sharp-shinned Hawk from the Audubon Society.

Though a bit of a sad tale this week, let's add the Sharp Shinned hawk to Vernon's list of raptors to keep an eye out for. I hope that we encounter a living one to add to our photographs. -Norma Manning

Sharp-shinned Hawk killed in a window strike