ML21515481
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Immature Unknown sex - 1
Observation details
When Dad woke me up at about 10:00, he told me that there was an accipiter with prey in our backyard. I jumped out of bed and came out to find this bird disemboweling what we eventually realized was a male cardinal. We got incredible views of this bird as it ripped apart its prey on the ground under the forsythia bush by the deck. I photographed it copiously, and eventually Dad and I got the scope and trained it on the hawk. This yielded a whole new dimension of amazing viewing. After some research, I identified the bird as a Sharp-shinned. (I feel pretty comfortable identifying flying accipiters, but I find perched birds like this one to be tricky). It seemed to have a small head with a relatively large eye. The bird was a juvenile; its chest markings extended relatively far down its belly, and were reddish and broad. Its tail appeared squared off, but its tip was very tattered. I got decent photographs from many angles. Two are below. (Note the foot of the poor cardinal, sitting to the right of the carcass.) The hawk finished eating at about 12:00, at which point it hopped up onto a very low forsythia branch and sat there digesting. The bird shifted position a few times, but it stayed under the forsythia bush until we went outside through the garage at about 12:30, at which point it took off and flew up into the large pines in the backyard.
Technical information
- Model
- Canon PowerShot SD850 IS
- ISO
- 80
- Focal length
- 5.8 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire, auto
- f-stop
- f/2.8
- Shutter speed
- 1/250 sec
- Dimensions
- 3264 pixels x 2448 pixels
- Original file size
- 481.35 KB