Our Your Stories Q&A for Friday is an eye-opener and a nature lesson, all rolled into one.
Birds of a feather do flock together, but what kinds of birds are they? Sue Gilberti of Eastwood captured a couple of pictures of a pair of good-sized birds in her neighbor’s backyard along Ridgewood drive in Eastwood.
She wondered if they could be falcons, so she e-mailed them along to Your Stories, and thankfully, we've got Cornell’s laboratory of Ornithology to lean on for questions like this.
The lab's Pat Leonard checked with one of Cornell’s top bird identification experts, and even though the picture quality isn't the greatest, he's narrowed it down to either a cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk.
They plumage is nearly identical on both types of hawk. The photos were taken at some distance, so it's hard to know for sure. Sue, they say if the bird was the size of a crow, it's a cooper's hawk...smaller than that, probably the sharp-shinned. Hope that helps out.
If you've got a question, call the Your Stories line at 446-9900, or e-mail us: YourStories@9wsyr.com
