| The little 'sharpie', smallest of the accipitrine (forest-dwelling hawks with short wings and long tails) hawks, is one of the most dashing and instantly maneuverable birds on earth. In casual flight, the Sharp-shinned attracts little more attention than a blackbird. But observing it in pursuit of a small bird through a tangled maze of branches and leaves, the action is so incredibly swift that it appears a blur.
The sharp-shinned hawk helps stabilize the populations of small birds. The daily activities of sharp-shinned hawks over the course of the year tend to remove the slower, less fit individuals, maintaining a healthy breeding stock. Early naturalists and hunters generally condemned its cruel deeds,' since in those days strong anthropomorphic sentiment generally coexisted with profound ignorance concerning predator-prey relationships.
Such predation does not, in this case, effect overall songbird populations; that is determined by the amount of habitat suitable to the species in question. Strange as it might seem, sharp-skin populations are largely determined by the numbers of small birds available as food. Starvation keeps the sharpie in balance with its prey.
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