Cape May

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South of Avalon is Cape May Point State Park, a birding mecca, especially in the fall. From September to December, migratory birds pass over the narrow finger of land, the last piece of New Jersey shoreline before the Delaware Bay. If the conditions are not right the birds linger in the area before crossing the open water. Wouldn't you?

First warblers migrate through, then birds of prey and finally, late in the season, it's the ducks. In early October, it was raptors. There's a large, wooden birdwatching platform built between the lighthouse and pond where the Cape May Hawk Watch takes place. Most days it's crowded with people looking up or out or across, watching. The first day we were there was Accipiter day: 358 sharp-shinned and 455 Cooper's hawks were counted. There were also 97 kestrels and 205 broad-winged hawks.








Cooper's hawk. Note the rounded tail trimmed in white.

sharpy

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I didn't take this wonderful photo of a sharp-shinned hawk; Dario Sanches took it. I do not have a crisp telephoto lens, so unless I can get only a few feet away, most birds elude me.

The photo does show the bird's namesake, its flattened, thin "shin" or shank.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sharp-shinned hawks the past week because Karen Sue and I have seen several. The photo also shows how difficult it is to tell a sharpy from a Cooper’s hawk, from most angles, they can look identical. Most guides list one of the defining field marks is that a sharp-shinned has a blunt, or "squared" tail and a Cooper’s tail is rounded. But in this photo, the tail appears to be rounded.

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