Expert: Julia Booth - 9/2/2010

Question
I was out in my yard today and i saw a little grey squirrel running along the top of our wooden stockade fence and out of nowhere a bird came swooping down out of a tree and tried to grab the squirrel. He missed, but the he sat on top of the fence looking around for a minute until he looked right at me then flew away. From what i could tell it looked to be a medium sized bird. Just a big bigger than a seagull or a crow, but it had a pretty big wingspan. It was all white with brown speckles all over it. It was hard to get a full view of the bird because it was sideways on the fence but i believe it had some small brown lines on the tail and back too. I've looked for pictures on the net trying to find out what kind of bird it was but haven't had any luck.  The closest I've found was a Cooper's Hawk but him not quite certain that was it. Like i said the bird was ALL white. Any idea's of what kind of bird it could be?? Thanks

Answer
My immediate guess, based in the physical description and the hunting behavior, would be Cooper's Hawk, or its sometimes look-a-like, the Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

Aside from the White-Tailed Kite, the Osprey is the only bird of prey that is mostly white. But it's not likely to be found eating a squirrel. It does have a very large wingspan, up to six feet, which would be much wider than either of those hawks. The Kite would be more likely to eat a squirrel, but wouldn't have quite as large a wing span, forty inches.

White-Tailed Kite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_Kite

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-tailed_Kite/id

Osprey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osprey

The only bird of prey I have seen with albinism is the Red-Tailed Hawk. There have been reports of Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-Shinned Hawks with partial albinism. But that is so incredibly rare. It's very possible that what you saw was a genetic abnormality of some sort.

Here's a site that shows images of a Red-Tailed Hawk with albinism:

http://www.freewebs.com/whitehawkfarm/thestoryofourname.htm

Let me know where you want to go from here,

Julia