Friday April 19, 2024: 46 new birds of 10 species, 7 recaps. No new species today. Bird of the day was Ruby-crowned Kinglet with 27 new bands, followed by Golden-crowned Kinglet with five.
The Sharp-shinned Hawks were flying today! When we think of hawks, we often picture Red-tailed Hawks sitting on the tops of highway street lamps, or soaring high overhead. While Sharpies will migrate high overhead, they are really birds of the forest and spend most of their time in the trees where they fly through the dense vegetation in search of small songbirds.
Sharpies are the smallest hawk in the US and Canada, but the males and females are radically different sizes. Can you guess which bird in the photo is the male and which is the female?
You might be surprised to learn that the female is the larger bird on the left, and the male is the smaller bird on the right. The wing of this male measured 170mm, and he weighed 106.6g. By contrast, the female had a wing of 195mm and she weighed 162.4g . . . 52% more than the male! Both of these birds were young – they hatched last summer – and they are probably headed to Canada for their first summer breeding season.
We caught and banded a second male Sharpie today, and there were two others that escaped from the nets before we could get to them. Our Friday crew did a great job managing the raptors today – many thanks to Abbey B, Alice, Ryan M, Sue S, Sheryl, and Andrea R.
–Andrea Patterson
Braddock Bay Bird Observatory 
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