Brazen Sharp-shinned Hawk

This afternoon while working in my yard I heard a repeated high-pitched noise. I found it was a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk, perched on my neighbors distant fence, giving an owl heck. The vocalization was something like "did, did, did, it, did, did, did, it" (repeated, in a high pitched manner). This is likely an alarm call similar to the "kek, kek, kek" or "kik, kik, kik" (maybe different since this one was a juvenile) call described in Birds of North American (BNA), online edition. In fact, BNA reports another alarm called used by a Sharp-shinned Hawk in pursuit of a Great Horned Owl.

Though this Sharpie was behaving aggressively towards this owl, it stayed at least 25 feet from it. Forunately, the owl in this case was mounted model not the real thing. Read more about Sharp-shinned Hawks here .

Today I also found that our population of Greater White-fronted Geese has increased from 4 to 6. There was at least 1 Cackling Goose near them. There was a good variety including Wood Ducks, a Western Grebe, American Wigeon, Gadwall, Green-winged Teal, Redhead Duck and Canada Geese.


SeEtta