Ok Beth, mom and i looked up your hawk in per Peterson's Field Guide (for Eastern Birds). We considered that your bird could be fairly young... and just changing to adult plumage. their colors are more distinct when mature. But, as it was, eye and head markings that would distinct even early on excluded a lot of other birds.

Ultimately we decided your bird was an Accipiter or True Hawk family, belonging to of one of two species which are very hard to tell apart by shape and coloration:

We believe it is either a Cooper's Hawk or a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

The main visual difference between these two is the the tail shape - Cooper's is rounded while Sharp-shinned is rectangular. However there is a significant difference in habitat.

The Cooper's Hawk is mapped as a year-round residents in your area, while the Sharp-shinned Hawk only migrates there for the winter ... which is now well and gone. The book also indicated that the Sharp-shinned has receded in breeding territory upwards towards Canada.

As far as the tail distinction, it was hard to tell from the photo. it seemed more rectangular to me but he was spreading it out in one photo, so it could have been a spread/rounded tail. Also the book itself notes specifically that coloring and tail shapes of the two species can be so similar in the field as to render positive identification/distinction impossible!



So, bearing all that in mind, the tentative identification here, consistent with shape and coloring, and probabilistically based on distinguishing habitat is:

Cooper's Hawk.

~ waves ~