Stretching after an early run on the Scottsdale Greenbelt last June at 5:00am, daylight but not yet sunup, I heard the familiar Kak, kak, kak, sharp, toneless, and irritated, coming from behind the house.  In the front door, grab the camera, out the back door.  Close now, louder, KAK, KAK, KAK.  Above me, on the utility pole in the alley next to our back wall, there she was, probably a female judging by her large size (Coops display the largest reverse size dimorphism of any hawk species in the world), the first adult Cooper’s Hawk I had ever seen in the city in mid-summer, in blast furnace, pre-monsoon heat.

Remember when Harris’s Hawk was the only daytime raptor you ever saw in Phoenix except for the occasional flyover Peregrine.  Not any more.  Back in the day of slide film when I began photographing birds I was seeing, I despaired of ever getting a good photo.  Coops were seldom seen then, and they were extremely wary.  In the past fifteen years this accipiter’s range has expanded dramatically into urban areas, I’ve now encountered them here in the Valley in every calendar month, and I have more good images of this species than of any other raptor.

I typically see this efficient predator doing one of two things, eating and bathing.  Cooper’s Hawks love to bathe.  Full stop.  I see Coops bathing all the time, in rain puddles, in irrigation canals, and in shallow backwaters of the Salt River.  The only other daytime raptor I’ve ever seen in the water is Harris’s Hawk, once, and the Coops I’ve caught bathing act as if it’s the highlight of their day.  I once watched an adult female Coop spend, from talon dip to the end of preening, over an hour on her toilette, and this was in winter, so it had nothing to do with the need to cool off in our Valley’s summer heat.

Meanwhile, back to the lady in our alley, she sat while I snapped off a dozen frames, never once looking down in my direction, then flew off.  Checking the images on the back of the camera, I thought she looked a little disheveled, blew one up bigger, and realized she looked . . . .wet!  Where she was going suddenly became less important than where she had been.

We have a “postage stamp” water feature in our back yard, maybe six feet long by three feet wide, perhaps large enough for a Coop to bathe but how would she have found it, right below her utility pole but abutting the eight foot high concrete block wall and beneath the heavy foliage of a Texas Olive.  It has a drip and a bubbler, and the small neighborhood passerines love it.  Walking over to the pool I noticed, with some disbelief, three wet tiles around one edge.  This revelation leads back, of course, to the reason for the species’ rather rapid urbanization.

Undoubtedly our lady Cooper’s had seen doves on the premises, reconnoitered the yard, and discovered the water.  Over the years we’ve had Coops in the yard many times.  We’ve had them drinking from our front fountain, we’ve watched one flush a Mourning Dove into our kitchen window, and we’ve witnessed two actual kills on our property.  Two of the most reliable places in the Valley to see Cooper’s are the Phoenix Zoo and the Gilbert Water Ranch.  Both have lots of water, lots of birds, and lots of food for those birds, many of them dove species, accipiters’ favored prey.  .  Last winter when I asked a non-birding friend why he inexplicably decided to put out seed feeders for “dickey birds” (his term, not mine), his answer was eerily prescient—“I think raptors are cool and I want to see if I can attract some to my yard.”

There are four fascinating facts I’ve learned about photographing Cooper’s Hawks in close proximity many times over the past decade.  The first is the diversity of their prey species, mostly birds, but I have also seen them devouring ground squirrels, lizards, and on occasion, frogs.  The avian menu I’ve observed ranges in size from Rock Pigeons to Inca Doves and include Mexican Jay, Black-headed Grosbeak, and Gila Woodpecker.

The second thing is the diversity of their eye (iris) color which can range from white (fledgling) to deep red (oldest adults I presume), but I have seen birds in adult plumage still sporting light yellow eyes and young birds with vertical chocolate drops on their breast feathers showing orange eyes.  Apparently eye color and feather molt do not progress together at the same speed.

Thirdly, Coops love to play with those ubiquitous purveyors of fun, the Common Ravens.  Many times I’ve seen the two species cavorting together in the thermals, tormenting, chasing, and harassing one another, yet I’ve never seen feathers actually fly or any type of tragic outcome for either species.  At times it seems the ravens are so adept at aerobatics they precipitate the initial engagement just to bedevil the rancorous accipiters rather than the other way around.

And, lastly, way too many of us assume we’re accipiter experts after we’ve seen a few.  The fact is, I am not and have never claimed to be one, but I know someone looking at the images accompanying this article will surely think one of them is a Sharpie.  So be it.  All I can say is “read everything you can find about the Coop/Sharpie conundrum, and then spend as much time scrutinizing every “asip” you see.  Learning is what birding is all about, and there are a lot more Cooper’s Hawks around for study purposes now than there used to be.