A crow assassin dines on his prey

Reader Dana Skare passed along these photos of a hawk — maybe an bird person can tell me what kind of hawk this is — taken a year ago from the driveway of his house near Saint Mary's hospital.

Is this the answer to our crow problem — more hungry predators?

Comments

[Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran]

Looks like a red tail hawk to me. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-tailed_hawk/id/ac

[Baileyswedishfish]

I think it's a juvenile Cooper's Hawk. Probably one that was hatched last summer and has stuck around due to the warm winter.

[JGreg]

It is a juvenile Red Tail Hawk. Comparing it to the crow in the first picture it is too big to be a Cooper's Hawk and the coloring matches a young Red Tail. We have a Cooper's that regularly stops by our feeder for lunch, even have some photos, but they mostly take sparrows and smaller birds. Usually nothing bigger than a Mourning Dove.