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Hawk on the ground at Mary Ellen McCormack project in South Boston

Remember when hawks were a rare things in the city? A roving UHub photographer spotted this seemingly put out hawk on the O'Callaghan Way side of the Mary Ellen McCormack project in South Boston today.

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Comments

Looks like another fowldogger to me.

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Cooper's Hawk

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What's the difference between the two?

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Copper's hawk has a distinct white "eyebrow" and a whitish upper breast, and red-tailed has a rusty red "bib" on its upper breast.

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Type of hawk changed.

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Cornell offers this Merlin Bird ID app for your phone.

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Did some research and I'd agree it's a cooper's. Cooper's have a more rounded head. Plus that chest pattern with lots more white brown is more typical of a cooper's. Red tails are larger and come in a very wide variety of colors. Some have a similar belly pattern but usually not as many brown spots. Main difference from this angle is a red tail will have a smaller head, usually darker, more uniform color. Red Tail a bit more like an eagle than a cooper's that's a little more owl like.

much easier in the air. Coopers have a longer tail that's banded - more like a jay. Red tails mostly have the distinctive red/brown tail that's more like a fan.

That's adults. Juveniles can be very different yet again.

Any true ornithologists are welcome to correct my description. I'm an admitted beginner.

UPDATE per train's comment above, the white eyebrow seems to be the giveaway that it's a Cooper's. Very distinctive on all the pics I looked at and not on the redtails.

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I'll throw in that I think it's a juvenile Cooper's, as it has a yellow eye. Adult Cooper's have a dark eye & all ages of red tails have a dark eye.

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It's a Red-tailed Hawk. This bird has no streaking on the throat and upper breast which a Cooper's Hawk would, like here. The "belly band" of streaking that results on this bird is a diagnostic mark for Red-tailed Hawk - no other hawk in North America has it. Also, Cooper's Hawk would be much slimmer than this burly bird.

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Agree -- not a cooper's hawk, but a juvenile red-tailed hawk.

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Bulky bird, dark helmet and belly band, this is definitely a Red-tailed Hawk.

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The checks don't come until next Wednesday.

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Dropped on your head one too many times?

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(inserts emoticon of face crying while laughing)

I bet he ate lead paint chips as a child....

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this might be a case of Resting Bitch Face. For all we know, this hawk is perfectly happy, laughing inwardly at some private joke, or lost in rueful nostalgia over that one time it might have gotten with that cute girl hawk if it weren't so young and unsure of itself, or maybe bemused by the existential mean-spirited joke that is life on earth in 2017, or whatever year it is on the Hawk Calendar.

“What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside.”

Then again, it might just be thinking, "Goddamned Southie gentrification. There used to be a buffet of baby raccoons and skunks and rabbits in this neighborhood. Gotta get me over to the Public Garden, where the squirrels are so fat from tourist popcorn, they can barely waddle."

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Hey, don't we have photographic evidence that Rocky and Ramona were werking on that?

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