In denser forest areas, these hawks tend to prefer easy access to edges, clearings, roads and waterways. For example, average distance from waterways away from nests in Wisconsin and Utah was , respectively. However, in the Appalachians, there seemed to no detectable preference for access to water. Forest edges, in particular, tend to be key as these are peak hunting grounds for these hawks. Cooper's hawks usually occur at elevations from sea-level to , more infrequently up to . In the American southwest and northwestern Mexico, they are commonly considered a bird of wooded foothills, often dwelling above . Although they often live in areas where deciduous trees are predominant, almost throughout the range they are often attracted to stands of conifers, which, due to their density, provide more extensive shelter and perhaps a more sturdy nesting site. Therefore, in areas such as Massachusetts and Wisconsin, they most often utilized stands of white pines ("Pinus strobus"). Additional Wisconsin studies showed that exotic conifer stands now support many Cooper's hawks even where native woodland is available. Tall, native deciduous tree stands may still be used extensively elsewhere, i.e. American beeches ("Fagus grandifolia") in New York (nearly 40% of nest trees used) and oaks in Maryland (60% of trees used as nests). This species often prefers fairly mature forest, i.e. in two different areas of Oregon, the Cooper's hawks preferred areas with trees of 30–60 years old (and 656 trees per ha) and 50–70 years old (and 1159 trees per ha), respectively. On average, the number of trees per hectare in Arkansas were found to be 935.7. Canopy coverage is key to nesting Cooper's hawks, needing to be at minimum about 55-70%, averaging 55% in Wisconsin and 69.8% in Arizona.