Cooper's Hawk?

I heard a commotion of crows in the trees along our property line on Saturday morning an immediately wondered if there was a raptor in the area. A few minutes later I spotted one on the ground in the underbrush. It looked like he was dining on a fresh kill which I thought might have been one of the resident cottontails. From a closer vantage point I confirmed that his meal was a bird. . . probably a dove and a little on-line search suggests that the hawk is a Cooper's Hawk..

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qgJ9​iw

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qgJ8​jh

more then likely a Cooper's. Looks a tad big to be a sharpie.

i'd vote for a coopers

To me, the cap/hood 'appears to' go all the way down the back, saying it would be a Sharp-shinned, Cooper's have a cap, but I can't really tell for sure in this shot.
I'd say, Sharpie though, maybe the OP can show us another shot showing the nape of the neck or the tail.

Randy

Unfortunately those are the only profiles I was able to capture. If size is any indication, I thought it was a crow when I first noticed it because it appeared to about that size. It was definitely larger than a dove. It was my first ever image of a hawk captured in the wild doing its predator thing.

It's more than likely a Cooper's then, if it was that large. I am not one to say I know it all, but from what I have learned here, I repeat, sometimes things sink in, other times, not.
I have a shot of a Sharp-shinned and that one was around the size in-between a Mourning Dove and a White-winged Dove, so it may all depend on whether or not it's cold and they're fluffed up, or...

Thanks for letting us know though, I was hoping that you had more shots, but sometimes you can't get that, I know I can't. heheh

Randy

If it's feeding on a dove, then I'd bet it's a Cooper's hawk. It's a bit hard to tell from the pix.

Great hunting shot, and I would vote on the coopers hawk as well.

Thanks. Just one of those lucky coincidences of being in the right place at the right time and having the camera handy. I understand why my 70-200 is way too short a lens to capture images like this consistently.