Falco sparverius
Order Falconiformes
Family Falconidae
Subfamily Falconinae
Other names: Sparrow Hawk
♂ Adult male.— Upper parts conspicuously reddish-brown; head, when seen near to, slate-blue, with a large reddish-brown spot; throat and cheeks white, a black mark from in front of the eye along the side of the throat, another from back of the eye; wings slate-blue; tail tipped with black; large black spots on belly and side.
♀ Adult female.— Very similar, but with more reddish-brown on the wings; no black band across tip of tail.
Nest, in a hole in a tree, or in a tower.
Eggs, varying from white, with few markings, to deep buff, more or less speckled with brown.
The Sparrow Hawk is a summer resident of New York and New England; it is nowhere common, and in the upland of northern New England it does not occur. Common spring and fall migrant along the coast, and an occasional winter visitant from eastern Massachusetts southward. It frequents extensive meadows, where a few tall trees here and there furnish it with posts of observation and a breeding-site in some dead limb. It often hovers over the grass, with tail broadly spread, the wings rapidly vibrating forward of the almost perpendicular body. Just after alighting the tail is tilted once or twice. During the courtship the male performs evolutions in the air, dropping rapidly from a height, uttering a note like the syllables killy, killy.
The small size of this hawk will distinguish it from all other hawks except the Sharp-shinned and the rather rare Pigeon Hawk [Merlin], and from each of these the reddish-brown of the back and tail at once distinguishes it. In flying, the Sparrow Hawk takes rapid strokes, and does not alternate these regularly with intervals of gliding, as the Sharp-shinned Hawk does. The tail of the latter extends far out behind him as he circles high in the air; the former’s wings reach well toward the tip of the tail, so that its tail does not show as conspicuously. The Sparrow Hawk’s wings are long and narrow; the Sharp-shinned Hawk’s are short and broad.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)