Hawk ID for Beginners - High Gap Hawk Watch

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Every September somebody comes up the trail with a brand-new field guide, opens it to the hawk pages, looks at the beautiful color paintings of birds perched on branches, then looks up at a dark speck a mile away and says, "How am I supposed to tell?"

Here's the secret: at a hawk watch, you almost never see color. The birds are far away and backlit against the sky. What you can see is shape (how long are the wings, how wide, how long is the tail?) and flight (is it soaring in circles, flapping steadily, or doing a few quick flaps and a glide?). Birders call the overall impression of size, shape and movement "GISS," or "jizz." It's how you recognize a friend walking toward you from a block away before you can see their face. Learn the shapes of the three big groups first, and you're most of the way there.

1. Buteos: the Soarers

Shape: Broad wings, and a short, wide tail that fans out like a hand of cards.
Flight: Soaring in big lazy circles, wings held flat or nearly flat. They flap as little as they possibly can.
Think: a big plank with a short fan on the back.

Broad-winged Hawk. Crow-sized and stocky. From below, the wings are pale with a neat dark border along the back edge, and the wingtips are a little more pointed than other buteos'. Adults have a tail with broad black and white bands. The one that comes in big flocks and circles up in kettles in mid-September.

Red-tailed Hawk. Big and bulky, our most common hawk all year round. From below, look for a dark band of streaks across the belly (a "belly band") and a dark bar on the front edge of each wing near the body. An adult's tail is brick red from above and glows pinkish from below. Late October and November is their time.

Red-shouldered Hawk. Slimmer, longer-tailed, with a tail of narrow white bands. Look for a pale crescent "window" near each wingtip when the sun shines through. Often flaps more than other buteos.

2. Accipiters: the Forest Hawks

Shape: Short, rounded wings and a long tail. Built for darting through trees after small birds.
Flight: Flap-flap-flap-glide. A few quick, stiff wingbeats, then a glide, then a few more. If you remember one thing from this page, remember that rhythm.
Think: a small T with a long stem.

Sharp-shinned Hawk. Small, about the size of a blue jay to a mourning dove. Its little head barely pokes out in front of the wings, and the end of its tail looks square. Quick, snappy wing beats. Our most common accipiter by far, and they come through by the hundreds in late September and early October, often low and fast right over the rocks.

Cooper's Hawk. Bigger, about crow-sized, with a bigger head that sticks well out in front of the wings, and a longer, rounded tail with a white tip. In a glide it looks like a flying cross. Slower, stiffer wingbeats.

Sharpie or Cooper's? This is the hardest call at any hawk watch. A big female sharp-shin and a small male Cooper's are nearly the same size. Look at the head and the tail tip, and don't be embarrassed to say "accipiter, species unknown." Our counters say it a few times every day. Kenneth Hathorn has been counting for twenty-five years and he says it too.

Northern Goshawk. The big, rare, fierce one, larger than a Cooper's, with a heavier body. A few come through in November. If you see one, tell everybody.

3. Falcons: the Speedsters

Shape: Long, pointed wings, swept back, and a long tail.
Flight: Steady, strong, fast wingbeats, usually in a straight line. They don't spend much time circling.
Think: a boomerang, or a swallow, but bigger.

American Kestrel. Our smallest falcon, about the size of a robin with longer wings. Light and buoyant, a little fluttery. Sometimes stops to hover in one place. Up close, very colorful: the males have blue-gray wings and a rusty back, and both sexes have two black stripes down the face.

Merlin. A little bigger than a kestrel and much darker and tougher-looking. Flies fast and direct, like it's late for something, with powerful wingbeats. Doesn't hover. If a small falcon goes past you like a bullet, it's probably a merlin.

Peregrine Falcon. The big one, crow-sized, with a heavy chest and a dark "helmet" on the head. When it soars, the broad base of the wings and the tail make it look like an anchor. Once almost gone from the East, now coming back, and this August it was taken off the endangered species list. Every peregrine at High Gap still gets a cheer.

The Others (and Why They're Easy)

Turkey Vulture. Big and dark, with its wings held up in a shallow V. Tips and teeters from side to side like it's had a little too much to drink, and almost never flaps. From below, the flight feathers are silvery and the front of the wing is black, so the wing looks two-toned. Small bare red head on an adult. Not technically a hawk, but we count them.

Osprey. Long, narrow wings with a crook at the wrist, so from far away it looks like a gull or a big letter M. White underneath, with a dark patch at each bend of the wing. They eat only fish, and they head south early.

Northern Harrier. Long wings and a long tail, held in a slight V, flying low and tipping back and forth. A white patch at the base of the tail is the giveaway. Adult males are pale gray and white (birders call them "gray ghosts"); females and young birds are brown.

Bald Eagle. Huge, with long, flat wings like a plank. Adults have the white head and tail everybody knows. Young eagles are mottled brown and white for their first four or five years and confuse everyone. One clue: a bald eagle's head sticks out in front of the wings more than half as far as its tail sticks out behind.

Golden Eagle. Dark all over, with a smaller head (it sticks out less than half the tail's length) and a longer tail than a bald eagle's. Holds its wings in a slight V. Young birds have white patches in the wings and a white tail with a dark band at the end. The prize of November.

How to Practice

Start with what you know. Turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks are around all year. Watch them from your car, your yard, the school parking lot. Learn their shapes cold, and you'll have something to compare everything else to.
Watch the flight first, then the shape. Flap-flap-glide? Accipiter. Circling with flat wings? Buteo. Fast, steady, pointed wings? Falcon.
Sit next to an experienced counter. Ask "what is that and how do you know?" Every counter at High Gap loves that question.
Get a guide that shows them flying. The ones with paintings of perched birds won't help much on the rocks. Hawks in Flight by Pete Dunne, David Sibley and Clay Sutton is the book about shape and GISS, and the Peterson guide to hawks shows them from below, the way we see them.
Don't worry about being wrong. Everyone is. My seventh-graders call every bird an eagle for the first hour. By the end of the day they're telling me the sharpies from the Cooper's.

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Last updated September 12, 1999