The female Cooper's Hawk has finished her squirrel dinner and is now resting while her dinner digests.
The vertical stripes on the breast of the female show clearly in these two pictures. The stripes mark her as a second-year bird.
These pictures show the pattern on the female's back. Note the hooked bill, designed to tear apart her prey. These birds are much feared by other birds and small animals. While taking these pictures, we saw a squirrel in a tree about 100 feet from the female. He was climbing the tree very slowly and quietly, being very careful to keep the full diameter of the tree trunk between him and the hawk.
Here the female is perched on the limb of a fallen tree, about ten feet above the ground, looking for something to eat on a very wet day.
