Sharp-shinned Hawk - The Eye Tells It All

Ok, let me start by saying, "I'm not a highly knowledgable birder". But I am capable of learning a thing or two about the creatures of nature with whom I spend time with a camera.

 

I spent over an hour today with this pretty little raptor, an "adult" Sharp-shinned Hawk.

 

Why do I call it an "adult", rather than a "juvenile"?

 

Well, according to my "birder" friends and official birding sites on the internet, one key way to tell when a juvenile Sharpie has become an adult Sharpie is when it's eyes become a solid orange or red color. A juvenile Sharpie is pretty sure to have yellow eyes.

 

Now, my real delimma: in getting Real Up Close with my zoom lens this morning and then cropping the resulting pic, I can now see that the left eyeball of this Sharpie is both yellow and orange/red, so I'm going to go out on a limb here, as follows:

 

This Is A Crazy Teenage Sharpie, Looking To Find Itself In A Crazily Changing World Amid Increasing Climate Change.

 

Hah! You never would have guessed where I was headed with that one! Would you?

 

Anyway, I loved working with this Sharpie today! This bird has quite a character and it was really fun to watch it while it expressed a lot of that character.

 

Done