Accipiter striatus
Order Accipitriformes
Family Accipitridae
Subfamily Accipitrinae
Adult.— Upper parts grayish-brown; tail crossed with blackish bars; under parts white, streaked with reddish-brown.
Immature.— Resembles immature Cooper’s Hawk, but tail square.
Nest, usually in trees.
Eggs, white, greenish-white, or bluish-white, usually heavily blotched with brown.
The Sharp-shinned Hawk is a common migrant throughout New England and New York, occurring in April, September, and October. It is rare in the breeding season in New England, and still rarer in winter; but it is a common permanent resident of the lower Hudson Valley. The Sharp-shinned Hawk is the commonest small hawk in spring and fall, and the most destructive to bird-life. Often a hush falls over the thickets which a moment before were full of song and fluttering wings; if we glance upward at such a time, we can generally discover a small hawk drifting over, taking a few strokes, then gliding forward on spread wings, or wheeling motionless.
Its long tail and short, rounded wings, and the alternation of wing-stroke and periods of gliding, mark it as either a Sharp-shinned Hawk, or a near relative, the Cooper’s Hawk, and distinguish it from the other small hawk, the Sparrow Hawk [American Kestrel]. When pursuing its prey, however, it does not stop to glide, but flies with rapid wing-strokes, dashing into a thicket where the frightened birds have taken refuge. It is then to be distinguished from the Sparrow Hawk by the entire absence of reddish-brown on the back. When it perches, it chooses a limb more or less in shadow; its tail extends some distance beyond its folded wings, and is crossed with several blackish bars. There is no way of surely telling a large female Sharp-shinned Hawk from a small male Cooper’s Hawk; the male of the smaller species and the female of the larger may, however, always be told by their size. When the nest is approached, the parents utter a cry suggesting “a Hairy Woodpecker’s long call ” (F. H. Allen).
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)