Hawk Identification Made Easy!

[@shirleywilhelm1495]

I like this style of video. Pictures, descriptions are very helpful in understanding.

[@BadgerlandBirding]

We’re glad you liked it!

[@Isaac-47517]

The "Cross" , or big and little 'T' , is my fave.

[@WilliamSFBikeTour]

A coworker recommended this channel. I am enjoying it. Thank you. Peace. ✌

[@BadgerlandBirding]

@@WilliamSFBikeTour tell them thanks and glad you enjoy it as well!

[@PatrickSmeaton]

I've been a birder for 30 years, and I've always been most interested in raptors. Yet, I still struggle with ID'ing some. This was super helpful.

[@aknightthatsaysnee5259]

I really like this! No complaints or criticism. Nice legible board writing (and you write really fast!). I'll be watching this video again and again, I'm sure. Ah, one thing, maybe you can show a geographical map of where we can expect or not expect to see one of these fine birds. Thank you very much!🎉

[@WalkingEng]

Great presentation, thanks for purring this together

[@joanncooper3042]

Excellent presentation. Very informative and packed with great tips. Thank you.

[@jimwilliams4170]

Great presentation!! Astonishing knowledge. You have answered so many questions about my observations . Thank you

[@BadgerlandBirding]

@@jimwilliams4170 thank you!!

[@thecornells7430]

Excellent, guys. Very well put together and great for us European birders. 🇬🇧 Raptors are always fascinating , so many plumage variants. Superb birding channel. Thanks.

[@k.mike2687]

Thanks for the helpful information to id hawks. I will watch again to learn more. I like watching hawks unless they are watching over my feeders.

[@somebodyandthem]

Red shoulder hawks are becoming more common out west. I seen them quite a bit in southern Oregon

[@BadgerlandBirding]

That’s really interesting. A lot of raptors seem to be moving into the PNW

[@mister-bland]

Definitely a good presentation style! Learned a lot!

[@Shrock568]

I really like this video and would love to see more like it.

[@garymeredith2441]

Fantastic job here Derek you did wonderful here I love the way you covered it .

[@chriscarlsen2100]

I liked this style a lot and this was a good one to do with. I've gotten better at identifying Hawks over the past couple years. But you added some great information that will further help me. Thank you.

[@Jps3bs]

Excellent video on identifying hawks. Love the shape diagrams. Very well done Derek😊

[@JAGzilla-ur3lh]

I don't have time to watch right now, but I'll be back for this one. For now, an offering for the algorithm. The only hawks I can reliably ID right now are red-tailed and red-shouldered. I have a lot of very active, vocal red-shoulders that are always circling over my neighborhood, so I'm very familiar with them. And then red-tails are unmistakable.

[@BadgerlandBirding]

We appreciate your offering! Hawks are wild. Red-tails alone can look so different depending on subspecies

[@rolling.reggie]

Love this format!

[@justjast]

Wow - great content, well-organized, and a pleasant delivery/presentation! Thanks @Badgerland Birding - I really enjoy your channel. I've recently moved back to Virginia after over 15 years in Guatemala. The big kettles of Broad-winged Hawks passed over my house most years, on their migration, usually sometime in October or maybe late September. It was always great fun to go outside and suddenly see the sky filled with them. It surprised me when you mentioned them - I forgot you'd see them from a Northern viewpoint in the States, when they first start their journey. :) I'll check and see if you have a video on the trip you mentioned to observe their departure. Also, I recently spotted a Red-shouldered Hawk in a big old oak in my yard and appreciate your description of their flights. Now I know for sure that's what I saw on a different day, flying over the field in front of my house!

[@NathanWebb-c5h]

My favorite hawk is the zone-tailed hawk.

[@BadgerlandBirding]

That’s an awesome one! We saw our lifer at the Grand Canyon

[@Rudrakxh]

i love birds especially hawk too.

[@Beryllahawk]

-excited screeching from far away- Okay! Now that I have it out of my system a bit hehe - Wooohooo!! Hawks!! You already know these are among my favorites, hehe - great to know how "Buteo" is actually pronounced, too. (One of my most embarrassing bad habits is not knowing how to pronounce words I've only ever seen in print and never heard out loud!) Lots and LOTS of red-shouldered hawks in my area, and golden eagles. One of the first reasons I started wanting to ID birds at all was because I would see these huge birds near the road and I just didn't want to believe they were ALL "buzzards" (which I now know, black vultures are THE common roadside raptor around here). And come to find out: they weren't all vultures! Immature golden eagles and some of the biggest juvenile red-shouldered hawks can be mistaken for a vulture depending on how they are flying and if you don't have a good frame-of-reference for size. After all it's very hard to tell if you're seeing a vulture high up, or a hawk lower down, when it's just passing over head and you don't have much in the way of trees or anything to give you an idea how far away the bird actually is. And in parts of Texas there was a whole dust-up (back in the 90s I think) about juvenile golden eagles getting shot down by mistake. VERY cool way to present the information, and I really do like this - it feels very classroom and for me that's extremely helpful and positive. Makes my brain latch on better I guess! I also chuckled a bit when you mentioned the debate about "raptors" as a term. Boy is THAT a topic and then some! I recall seeing a series (on PBS Nature of course) discussing dozens of species from sparrow hawks to Stellar's sea eagles and ospreys and even corvids. A truly wild amount of diversity. They talked about the snail kites too which was NEAT. I have to say though - why DO some birds get called hawks in their common name, when they aren't "real" hawks - like the sparrow hawk, you know? I suppose some of it has to do with how general and interchangeable the terms have been, historically speaking. I would absolutely love to see you cover some more of these species though!

[@jacobcurrier8104]

Great video thank you!

[@ecmarks438]

This fall I got an up close look at a Cooper's (sparrowhawk) which chased a bird that hit my bedroom window and devoured it beneath the window plucking feathers every where and ripping flesh. Took a few pics to identify the kind of hawk. I jumped when the bird hit the window loudly, left a smear. 😮

[@michaelsimko7694]

I'm very familiar with the Red-tailed and see them almost anywhere, except for environments with denser trees and without much open areas. This time of the year is when I see them perched on lights on major highways located in open to semi-open environments. They've become a very successful bird in urban parts of America. A recreational area that has a few ponds and many trees, along with a semi-open woodland, is home to a Red-shouldered pair. Every year beginning in late February/early March, I hear them being very noisy. I even got to see one of them fly in and perch while I was there in March one year. Cooper's is another one that I see almost anywhere, except for areas that are more heavily developed without enough trees. I recently saw an adult flying low and fast through the condo complex I live in, as if it was targeting prey. The Broad-winged and Sharp-shinned are the ones I hardly ever see or hear most likely due to them preferring forests and larger woodlands. I've never seen migrating groups of Broad-winged's soaring. I've never gotten to see a Northern Harrier all the times I've been to a large local shoreline park and coastal areas that have protected beach, marshland, and open tall grasses.

[@markshen3280]

Good morning 🌅 to you from Hong Kong 🇭🇰, Derek. May I please ask where would Owls 🦉 fit in, according to your diagram……? Would those be in the “others” category……🤔🤔🤔🤔🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐

[@BadgerlandBirding]

Great question! There’s actually a debate on whether owls are actually raptors or not. They are on a separate beach from hawks entirely!

[@jamescady723]

I love all your videos, the trips are fun, and yes, I love these instructional videos, too! Very very helpful!

[@christineborgatti3760]

Still not sure which kind I get but I'll go look at my pictures

[@lorrainejsuhrada5816]

ENJOYED VIDEO I FIND HAWKS INTERESTING

[@BadgerlandBirding]

They are certainly fascinating!

[@lindap9079]

You didn't mention that when perched, Red-tailed Hawks look like a football in trees. Deciding if I'm looking at a Cooper's or Sharp-shinned is very challenging for me.

[@StarGateUSA]

AWESOME VIDEO. are owls considered raptors?

[@BadgerlandBirding]

There’s actually a big debate about that. For this video we focused on things you’d see soaring more than most owls usually do

[@woodfoxxx]

Still not easy. I have a lot of these moving through my Catskills property. Even taking out a chicken once in awhile. But that's okay. I love hawks. It it true that juvenile raptors often appear larger than adults?

[@iiSips1142]

Accipiter, Astur, and Circus are all in subfamily Accipitrinae as found by Catanach et al 2024. Genus Circus is sister to the genus Astur and harriers do share many structural/plumage traits with the other accipitrine raptors. Why then categorise northern harriers as "other"? It is more helpful for identification to recognise this relationship.

[@BadgerlandBirding]

To make thing simple so that people don’t need to understand all the technical jargon to learn

[@iiSips1142]

@@BadgerlandBirding I suppose I don't understand what technical jargon is necessary to say a harrier is a type of hawk that is closely related to Accipiter and Astur.

[@123amsterdan456]

Caracara?

[@BadgerlandBirding]

@@123amsterdan456 they go with the Falcons!

[@Doki_Doki_is_peak]

I wanna learn how to identify hawks too ,ah

[@BadgerlandBirding]

Boooooo get off the stage!

[@WillFilicetti]

Red tailed hawks are huge basically small eagles lol.

[@BadgerlandBirding]

So males can be surprisingly small. However females can be massive, yes!

[@Oltoir]

TIL I've been saying Buteo wrong this whole time. (I've only ever read it, not heard it.. I was saying 'byew-TAY-o')

[@yep-sb4uf]

We call em "day owls" We call owls "night hawks" Hoohoo

[@MaggieStewart-u8r]

Vulture a raptor?? - their feet look like a chickens, their DNA is closest to herons

[@BadgerlandBirding]

@@MaggieStewart-u8r as I mentioned, raptor is a loose term used for various species that technically are or aren’t “raptors”. For an identification video it made sense to include them because many people see them soaring

[@Adasaur250]

Multiple more recent studies consistently find New World vultures to be closer to (or within) Accipitriformes than anything else; the vulture-heron connection is a bit outdated at this point. That said, as mentioned, "raptors" is a loose term that doesn't really have a taxonomic meaning at this point. (E.g., falcons are raptors but are more closely related to parrots and passerines.) As an aside, this does make it a little funny for a dinosaur paleontologist to see ornithologists grumbling about the use of the term "raptor" to refer to animals like _Velociraptor_ - at least they seem to form a true monophyletic clade!