Small Hawk Eats Cardinal 2018

In my Topeka Kansas yard on December 14, 2018 I heard a bird hit the window. I jumped up to look outside and saw a half dazed cardinal on the ground. Almost immediately I saw this small hawk diving from the top of a tall tree heading straight at me behind the window. I knew hawks don’t attack people! He was really diving at the injured cardinal on the ground below me. He captured the bird and flew behind the base of this shrub.
Let’s determine the identity of the hawk. The most commonly seen hawks capturing birds in backyards across North America are the Accipiters. Accipiters have long tails and short wings that make them adept at flying through trees in pursuit of their typical prey – song birds. We have two commonly encountered species in the winter in the United States: the larger Cooper’s hawk and the smaller sharp-shinned hawk. Adults of both have blue-gray backs and white breasts with rufous barring. This bird is definitely an adult. There are two things that are visible on this bird that helps us identify it, the eye position and the nape color. The eye is about halfway between the front and the back of the head – making it a sharp-shinned. On a Cooper’s the eye would be near the front of the head. The nape color is the same blue-gray color as the cap of the bird, another trait of a sharp-shinned. If it was a Cooper’s the nape would be lighter color.
You can find a link in the description that compares all of the features that distinguish Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned hawks. It’s not every day that you get to witness a predator eating its prey in your backyard. I hope you found the video educational and intriguing.
Compare Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks:
https://feederwatch.org/learn/tricky-...