By Sally Siko

Last month, I made a quick trip down to Ft.Fisher NC in search of a Grey Kingbird. I got lucky and found the Kingbird early and since the weather was so beautiful, decided to stick around and continue birding in the area.
While walking on the Rocks area at Federal Point, I spied a Coopers Hawk soaring overhead.
I watched it for a minute and then it dropped down to land on some brush just a few feet away from where I was standing!
It’s not often that I’ve been able to get a close up look at one of these beauties so it was a lot of fun getting these shots.

Coopers Hawks are a year round resident of North Carolina and are found mix of forests or woodlots bisected with fields and open areas containing thickets and brush piles. Happily they seem to prefer to perch on the limbs of dead tree branches in fields or on fenceposts which makes them a little easier to find and photograph.

Interestingly Coopers tend to be more tolerant of people than other raptor species so it’s not unusual to see them in urban areas too.
In fact I think I’ve seen more Coopers Hawks flying through the crowded suburbs of North Carolina’s barrier islands (Wrightsville Beach, Topsail Island, Nags Head & Cape Hattaress) than anywhere out in nature.
Crazy huh?

I spent about 10 minutes watching this Coopers as it was totally preoccupied with something unseen scurrying in the leaf litter below.
The bird was remarkably calm as it sat there in the sun, ever so often glancing down to fix it gaze on the prey hidden somewhere in the bush.
Then all of a sudden, the hawk fluttered down into the tangled brush and disappeared into the undergrowth.
I heard the bird stomping around down there but couldn’t see it or what she was after.
Unfortunately I’ll never know if the Coopers hunt was successful because it did not pop up out of the brush again, at
least not that I saw anyway.
Perhaps it walked out on the other side of the bush and flew off at a low angle into the fields.
Got to respect the sneak game a large bird 🙂

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on the full frame beast of an SLR, the mighty @canonusa
#5Ds