Bird Profile

Cooper's Hawk

The crow-sized accipiter that moved into the suburbs and learned that bird feeders concentrate prey. Here is how to identify it, and what you may and may not do about it.

The Cooper's Hawk is a long-tailed, short-winged forest hawk built for ambushing birds in cluttered space. It is roughly the size of a crow, with a heavy blocky head, staring eyes (red in adults, yellow in juveniles), long yellow legs and a tail with broad dark bands and a rounded white tip.

It is also the bird most likely to be standing on a pile of feathers in your yard. Accipiters follow concentrations of small birds, and a well-stocked feeding station is exactly that. Almost everyone who feeds birds for several years eventually gets a Cooper's Hawk, and almost everyone finds it upsetting the first time.

This page handles identification, including the genuinely hard separation from the Sharp-shinned Hawk, the biology behind the suburban invasion, and the narrow set of things you are legally and ethically able to do when one starts working your yard. For the full management sequence, see hawks at the feeder, which this page deliberately does not repeat in full.

How to identify a Cooper's Hawk#

Structure first, plumage second. A Cooper's Hawk has short, rounded wings and a long tail, the classic accipiter shape for flying through trees. In direct flight it uses several stiff flaps and then a glide, and the head projects well forward of the wrists, so the bird looks like a flying cross with a long tail.

Adults have a blue-gray back, a dark cap that contrasts with a paler gray nape, and fine rusty barring across white underparts. Juveniles are brown above with fine, crisp brown streaks on a white breast, the streaking thinning out toward the belly. Both ages show a long banded tail with a rounded tip and a fairly wide white terminal band.

The typical call is a loud, even cak-cak-cak, usually heard near a nest. Away from the nest these birds are silent, and a Cooper's Hawk hunting a feeder gives no warning at all.

Cooper's or Sharp-shinned? A real separation table#

These two species are the standard hard problem of North American bird identification. Overall size is the worst field mark, because a large female Sharp-shinned Hawk and a small male Cooper's Hawk are close to the same size. Use structure.

Two shortcuts that help in a yard. First, a hawk that habitually kills Mourning Doves, European Starlings or Blue Jays is far more likely to be a Cooper's. Second, a hawk that walks around confidently on the ground under your feeders, or chases a squirrel, is almost certainly a Cooper's. Sharp-shinned Hawks rarely take prey that size.

Not every bird can be identified, and the honest answer for a fast, distant accipiter is accipiter species. Experienced hawk watchers leave a share of birds unidentified every season.

The goshawk at the other end#

The third North American accipiter is the American Goshawk, a much larger and bulkier bird of northern and mountain forests. Adults are pale gray below with a bold white eyebrow over a red eye. Juveniles are heavily streaked underneath, including the belly, with a wavy pattern on the tail bands.

It is a rare yard bird almost everywhere. The main reason to know it is that large female Cooper's Hawks get reported as goshawks constantly, and the correction almost always runs in that direction.

A related note on names: the American Ornithological Society moved Cooper's Hawk out of Accipiter and into the genus Astur in 2023, alongside the goshawk. Many field guides, apps and websites still say Accipiter cooperii. The bird is unchanged.

What Cooper's Hawks eat and how they hunt#

Birds make up the bulk of the diet, weighted toward medium-sized species: doves, starlings, robins, jays, flickers, quail and, in cities, House Sparrows and pigeons. Mammals matter too, especially chipmunks, tree squirrels and ground squirrels, more so in some western populations.

The hunting method is ambush plus a short, violent chase. A Cooper's Hawk sits concealed, watches, then comes in low and fast around a building or hedge, using cover right up to the moment of the strike. It kills with its feet, gripping and squeezing rather than biting, and will sometimes hold prey underwater.

That style explains everything about hawk encounters at feeders. The bird needs cover to approach unseen and open ground for the final dash. A feeding station with a hedge on one side and lawn on the other is close to ideal habitat for it.

Cooper's Hawks also cache surplus food occasionally and will return to a kill, so a hawk that appears at the same hour on consecutive days is likely working a route rather than settling in permanently. Adults hunting for nestlings in late spring are the most persistent, because they need to deliver several birds a day, and that is often when a yard sees repeated visits over a couple of weeks.

The suburban Cooper's Hawk#

For most of the twentieth century this was a persecuted forest bird. It was shot in large numbers as a chicken hawk, and it declined further during the DDT era. Populations recovered after pesticide restrictions and legal protection, and then something unexpected happened: the species moved into towns.

Cooper's Hawks now nest in city parks, campuses, cemeteries and ordinary residential streets across much of the continent, in some places at higher densities than in nearby countryside. The reasons are straightforward. Cities offer year-round abundant prey in the form of doves, starlings and House Sparrows, plenty of mature trees for nesting, and fewer larger raptors that would kill them.

Urban living carries its own costs. In some cities, nestlings die from trichomonosis, a parasitic disease picked up from infected doves and pigeons, which is a direct consequence of the urban prey base. Collisions with windows and vehicles take others. This is a bird making a living in a landscape that suits it and injures it at the same time.

When one starts hunting your feeders#

The first thing to be clear about: a hawk taking a finch at your feeder is not a failure of your setup and not a moral problem you created. Accipiters have hunted flocking songbirds for millions of years. What a feeder changes is where it happens, not whether it does.

The second thing: the hawk is protected, so almost every deterrent people reach for is illegal, ineffective, or both.

What actually works is short and unglamorous.

1. Take the feeders down for one to two weeks. Without a concentration of prey, the hawk moves on to another patch. Your small birds disperse and come back afterward.
2. Add escape cover about 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 m) from the feeders, close enough to dive into and far enough that a hawk cannot use it as an ambush perch. A brush pile or a dense native shrub is ideal.
3. Move feeders away from open lawn, where a chase has the best odds of succeeding. See where to hang a feeder and moving a feeder.
4. Clean up the ground so Mourning Doves and juncos are not standing in the open in numbers.
5. Do not clear all cover. A yard with nowhere to hide is worse for small birds, not better.

The complete sequence, including how long to wait and what to expect afterward, is in hawks at the feeder. Note that hawk strikes and window strikes are often linked: a panicked flock hits glass, so if you are getting hawk visits it is worth checking your window distances at the same time.

Nesting and the yearly cycle#

Pairs build a bulky stick nest, typically 25 to 50 feet (8 to 15 m) up in a tree, often in a crotch against the trunk, sometimes on top of an old squirrel or crow nest. Clutches are usually 3 to 5 bluish-white eggs. Incubation runs roughly a month, and young leave the nest at about four to five weeks, then stay dependent on the adults for several more.

Nesting birds are noisy and defensive. A pair with young will dive at people and pets that pass beneath the nest tree, which is the one time of year a Cooper's Hawk announces itself. Give the tree a wide berth for a few weeks and the behavior ends on its own.

Northern birds migrate south in fall, moving along ridges and coastlines with other raptors, which is why hawk watch sites count them in numbers each September and October. Many populations in the middle latitudes are resident year-round, which is why feeder encounters peak in winter when other food is scarce.

Living with a Cooper's Hawk#

• Learn the structure, not the size. Tail tip, head projection and head shape settle far more birds than a size estimate does.
• Expect winter visits and long absences. One hawk hunts a wide circuit and may include your yard once a week.
• Give small birds cover at the right distance, and stop feeding for a couple of weeks if the pressure is constant.
• Never attempt to deter a hawk directly. It is illegal and it does not work.
• Report your sightings. Backyard raptor records are genuinely useful, and citizen science projects collect them.