Show by ted kesting many a good shot who knows his ducks one from another as far as he can see them in flight never troubles to distinguish between the helpful and the harmful hawks at the sight of a hawk lie he bangs away and nine times out of ten ton its a beneficial mouse hawk lie ho kills and leaves hanging on the fence donald culross peattie Pc attle attie this count rys best known nature writer reports that h he e lia iia has s never yet seen a coopers cooper hawk or a goshawk punished for its depredations and these are your poultry and game bird killers its true that sometimes individual birds among the beneficial kinds of hawks will acquire an appetite for poultry such antisocial individuals can be dealt with when they start killing birds but the man farmer or sportsman who shoots every marsh hawk and is destroying birds that make mice and rats 22 and 55 percent respectively of their total diet so it is of economic importance to the country at large to learn to distinguish the hawks there are some 32 kinds of birds of prey not all of them hawks in north america it might seem to be asking a lot of the nimrod to know them all but that be decesary ne cesary only a few of these make game birds and poultry as much as 20 per cent of their diet and of these the commonest is the chicken hawk the big blue darter or coopers hawk lets get to know this fellow lie he is a little smaller than the crow and the female is crow size or a bit more 18 to 20 inches from the short curved beak to the tail tip coopers are slim and trim compared to any other hawks in perching they have a curious ugly look hump shouldered with neck hanging and beady red eyes watching when they fly they dont like the beneficial kinds of hawks go soaring up in wide circles or shoot in a long glide on the wind while whistling boldly its flight is businesslike business like and per pert T formed in stolid silence the bird flaps a few strokes then glides then flaps again in a crow like fashion the important thing is to be able to tell the cooper from the innocent hawks when gun in laband hand you see it from beneath as it hangs in the sky the co cooper has short round wings but a long slender tail most other hawks have either a short round wings and short broad tails or b long pointed wings and long slender tails only a few other hawks bawks hav have the coopers combination of short broad wings an and d long slim tail and one of them is the also harmful goshawk it is a much bigger bird 22 to 24 inches in overall over all ail length he fur ther differs irom from the cooper an having a squared off tail tip up not rounded |