Banding 9/13: Small Sharpie

I went raptor banding again today and ended up banding two accipiters: a male Cooper's hawk and a female sharp-shinned hawk. As the migration picks up, these will be the two most common species we'll be banding, both because of the mass numbers of them that migrate through the Marin Headlands as well as the ease with which we are able to catch these particular species.

The sharp-shinned hawk is one of the smallest of the diurnal raptors in North America. It is funny to be banding them as they attempt to act "fierce" - biting at your finger for example - when in actuality, they just look really, really cute. The sharp-shinned hawk we banded today was a hatch-year female, and on the small side. For every bird we band, we have an "expected values chart" that lays out the average and mean range of all the measurements we take for a given species and sex. In this case, our female sharpie was on the low end of the mean range for all measurements.

Trying to look fierce. Actually looking cute.

Our data sheets and the "expected values chart."