The Cooper's Hawk, with its striking red eyes, is a medium-sized hawk that breeds from southern Canada to northern Mexico and winters as far south as Panama. The bird was named after the naturalist William Cooper, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Numbers of Cooper's Hawks declined in the past from hunting and pesticide poisoning. But since the ban of pesticide DDT in 1972 the Cooper's Hawk has thrived.
The Cooper's Hawk is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2012 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). The population trend appears to be increasing, and hence the species does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is very large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
All cute bird fans grab your crayons, because we've just added three new Birdorable coloring pages! Go to Coloring Pages to download the PDFs. You can visit the meet pages for each bird to check the colors: Green-cheeked Parakeet, Black Swan and Cooper's Hawk. Read more »
Birders know that Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-shinned Hawks look alike. These two species share many of the same field marks, and can often be found in the same habitat, behaving the same way. However, they don't often appear in the exact same place at the same... Read more »
