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ACCIPITER/ASTUR
When a smallish, long-tailed, flappy hawk bursts through your backyard, silencing the songbirds, and you aren’t sure if it is a Cooper’s or sharp-shinned hawk, you might loudly declare “accipiter!” But in late 2024, the American Birding Association Check-list Committee, based on scientific analyses of species’ DNA relationships, announced that the genus accipiter, once packed with 50+ global species, would be split into astur (Cooper’s and American goshawk) and accipiter (sharp-shinned hawk), perhaps with more splits in the future.
Two take-home messages here. First—although Cooper’s are often confused with sharpshins, they are actually more closely related to the American goshawk. Said differently, a Cooper’s hawk is more a scaled-down goshawk than it is a hefty sharpshin. Second—what will you declare the next ambiguous smallish forest-hawk that clears your yard of juncos? Unidentifed accipiter or astur? Accipastur? Hmmm—these options are clunky, and none really fits the urgency of the moment. We might just have to see what evolves.
Sharp-shinned hawk (Dave Harper)
B
B
