Accipiter striatus
The sharp-shinned hawk or northern sharp-shinned hawk, colloquially often nicknamed sharpie, is a small hawk, with males being the smallest hawks in the United States and Canada, but with the species averaging larger than some Neotropical species, such as the tiny hawk. The taxonomy is far from resolved, with some authorities considering the southern taxa to represent three separate species, white-breasted hawk, plain-breasted hawk, and rufous-thighed hawk. The American Ornithological Society and some other checklists keep all four species conspecific. A recent genetic study additionally recommended splitting the three Caribbean island populations as three additional separate species, though this has not yet been adopted by any of the ornithological authorities.

ALAN SCHMIERER from near Patagonia, AZ, USA · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- sharp-shinned hawkPBDB
- Sits inside
- AccipiterPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 19.3 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 2 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 14 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
21 occurrences of Accipiter striatus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
21 occurrences- Pleistocene89%
- Holocene11%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Accipiter striatus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Accipiter striatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
802 taxa- Falco sparverius13 sites
- Bubo virginianus11 sites
- Tyto alba10 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis9 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos8 sites
- Athene cunicularia8 sites
- Cathartes aura8 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos8 sites
- Corvus corax8 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius8 sites
- Zenaida macroura8 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis7 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus7 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps7 sites
- Accipiter cooperii6 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Antigone canadensis6 sites
- Buteo6 sites
- Charadrius vociferus6 sites
- Colaptes auratus6 sites
- Colinus virginianus6 sites
- Falco mexicanus6 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus6 sites
- Megascops asio6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Accipiter striatus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
19 references- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California2
- The fossil Birds of California2
- The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba1
- The late Quaternary bird community of New Providence, Bahamas1
- A late-Holocene bird community from Hispaniola: Refining the chronology of vertebrate extinction in the West Indies1
- Prehistoric exploitation of birds on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico1
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from northwestern Alabama1
- The late Pleistocene avifauna of Crystal Ball Cave, Utah1
- Reconstruction of mid Wisconsinan environments in southern New Mexico1
- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- Fossil and subfossil birds from the Bahamas1
Each of the 21 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 7 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Accipiter striatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ALAN SCHMIERER from near Patagonia, AZ, USA
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAccipiter through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vieillot 1897