Winchester Mystery Bird Solved!

What is spotted with red, white and brown feathers, has a black and white-banded tail, a sharp beak and talons, hangs out on street lamps, and took this inexperienced birder three months to identify? You might be able to tell me right off the bat, but for a long time, I called it the "Winchester Mystery Bird," or "Winny," for short.

Sitting on the same street light between 1 and 3 p.m. every fair-weathered day, Winny is the most reliable bird I know... but was the most difficult for me to identify. So, like every other new birder, I took it step-by-step and examined the clues. Starting with the sharp and down-turned beak, barbed talons, and general appearance, I could say one thing: Winny is definitely a raptor - or a stalking, stealthy, majestic bird of prey. 

From its perch high above the street, Winny can keep look-out for the abundance of perhaps small birds, mice, squirrels, and other rodents that thrive alongside the Contra Costa Canal. When prey is accessible, Winny swoops down, snatches it up with those sharp talons, and flies off to a safe place to eat. It is usually during flight that identifying a raptor is simplified: each species of raptor has either a unique "paint job" along the breast, under-wings, and tail, a special pattern or shape to the tail, or flight style.

Winny, however, refuses to fly when I have my binoculars or telephoto lens available and decides to fly when I am completely unprepared. But this, folks, describes the common experiences of any birder. 

Raptors are one of nature's most important elements. Because they eat rodents, snakes, fish, and even other birds, they help keep such species' populations in check. Without their contribution to the food web, there is a good chance that sprawling human communities could become overrun with disease-carrying rodents, or native plant and animal populations would struggle to survive their consumers higher up on the food chain. As a result, a raptor is an apex predator, or a top-level eater that keeps the food-chain balanced.

Knowing what kind of raptors are in your area can give you a good idea of what sort of rodents, snakes, fish, or smaller birds live near you: just as raptor species can vary in appearance, they also vary in what they consume or when they hunt (also called niche specialization). For example, a Red-tailed hawk is more likely to eat mice and squirrels, while an Osprey is going to hunt for fish. This is part of the reason why I was so curious about Winny's identity.

My Winny Notes contained the following details: Winny is a red head with a short, down-turned beak that is yellow with a black tip, has white and brown spotted plumage on the back, streaky red plumage on the breast, has a black-and-white banded tail that appears fan-like when folded but was unclear during flight, and gives a high-pitched "kah." 

Well, with those details and pictures in an Audubon bird guide, I narrowed the list down to two accipiters (agile, woodland hawks that primarily feed on small birds) and one buteo (high-soaring, open grassland hawks that feed on small mammals): Sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus), Cooper's hawk (Accipiter cooperii), and the California Red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus elegans). Winny looks like the Sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawk juveniles, but also an adult California Red-shouldered hawk. Now what?

As new birders and young Naturalists, we always have more details to consider - like habitat and prey, or more anatomical differences. Think things through, step-by-step. For example, Winny hangs out on street lamps in fairly open habitat with a source of water nearby, and even though I have never seen this raptor catch a meal, I can get an idea of what is available. Since accipiters are designed for agility in wooded areas, is this open space the best habitat for Winny? Are there a lot of small birds around for a Sharp-shinned hawk or a Cooper's hawk to feed on with such a lack of trees? Which of these species have rounded tails, considering Sharp-shinned hawks have squared-off tails? 

Answering these kinds of questions gave me my answer: Winny is a California Red-shouldered hawk. 

What a new birder realizes as they take on birding is that identifying a species based on appearance alone is  not always the easiest way to go about it. For example, I have never seen the bottom of Winny's wings or tail during flight. We have to examine bird behavior, and seriously take into account the habitat in which we find them. Considering these factors, we can start to figure out what species we are observing, and inherently, their role in the ecosystem. I certainly feel better knowing that Winny is helping to keep all of those mice out of my house.