I’ve talked about identifying feathers before, but I can’t help wanting another go at it, because it’s a fun topic and pastime.

After having found feathers in the pasture from great blue herons, great egrets, turkeys, mourning doves, Steller’s jays, scrub jays, northern flickers and western bluebirds, I came upon this beauty last week, and suspected it came from a Cooper’s hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, or maybe a rough-shouldered hawk. Safe guesses, all, since these birds frequent our neighborhood.

To figure out which feather I had, I consulted BIRD FEATHERS by S. David Scott and Casey McFarland. This book is a gem, and has helped me identify every feather I’ve found on the Wren Ranch, with the exception of two very small, very delicate specimens, which I assumed belonged to an Anna’s, calliope, or black-chinned hummingbird, but I was wrong about all three. (This story continued another day, when I’ve actually figured them out.)

The key to identifying this feather was to begin with the birds that frequent our yard, pasture, and feeders.

I started with the page featuring feathers from the sharp-shinned hawk. Not a match, however, as there is no white stripe that extends fully about an inch or so from the top.

It’s not a Cooper’s, either–again, no white band near the top.

But when I turned to the next page, I knew I had a match. See how the white band extends across the quill? And then there’s that pretty little swath of light brown on the right side that flares a bit in the middle. There is also a slim band of white at the top of the feathers in Scott’s book, and on the feather I photographed, although it isn’t clearly visible. This is the feather of a red-shouldered hawk, which is also the hawk that cries, cries, cries in the pasture. (It’s their nature to complain, I suppose.)