More Birds

This is the day for birds! After my goldfinch buddy flew away, I almost immediately heard a kik, kik, kik, kik singing that I didn't recognize. I looked up into the big sycamores behind the house, and saw a strange hawk with a black cap. The most common hawks around here are the very plentiful Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), and the less plentiful, but still common, Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus).

This bird was neither of these, however. I snapped a few photos with my 200mm Sigma lens set to max zoom (with optical stabilization on, of course). After searching in my books for a bit, I'm reasonably sure that it's a Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), because of its appearance and size. If it were larger, it could be a Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii), but this guy was only about 12 inches tall.