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| Cooper's hawk, on "refuge" Christmas tree, near the box elder by the front door. I made this shot a few weeks ago, when there was snow on the ground. |
Recently, during the course of answering someone's comment to another post, I replied that our mild winter had apparently made meal gathering easier on the Cooper's hawk, as it had been awhile since I'd observed it terrorizing the feeder-visiting birds and squirrels.
My casual words obviously reminded the raptors they'd been missing some easy pickin's. This past week, I've watched a Cooper's on the hunt a dozen times—zooming past my deskside window like a feathered jet on a strafing run, leaving the usual mess of mayhem in its wake…discombobulated small creatures scattering every whichaway, and sometimes a few gray-brown feathers floating in silent testimony to that unlucky one which regrettably zigged when it should have zagged.
Today I've witnessed a double-header.
About noon a Cooper's flashed around the corner and startled the usual mixed feeder flock into a confused mass retreat. Like a heat-seeking missile, the hawk locked onto a fleeing junco, pacing it turn-for-turn, quickly overtaking to nail the bird in mid-air, a few wing-flaps from where the chase began.
Then, a hour ago, another Cooper's—or maybe the same one—did a reverse surprise assault, coming around the streamside end of the cottage, and plucking a plump gray squirrel from the hanging suet block where he'd been greedily gorging. I watched the hawk carry his limp prize across the river.
Two-for-two…and the day's not yet over!
8 comments:
Great photo, Grizz. Nature is a grisly business!
Our last-summer hawk would blaze down by the feeder and scare the birds into a frenzied retreat. Occasionally, one of the birds would smack into a window and fall, stunned, to the porch. The hawk would swoop in, grab the disabled bird, and zip off.
We have a sparrow hawk Grizz who jets through the farm yard every day at the speed of light, scattering birds in all directions. Our feeders are placed near to trees to give our little birds some protection but sometimes, as you say, a mass of floating feathers signals that the hawk has scored a hit.
Yesterday, while we were driving I-95 to a meeting, my colleague in the passenger seat pointed out a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a a power line gripping a Gray Squirrel. The squirrel's tail hung perfectly in front of the hawk's tail feathers, giving the hawk's tail a sort of a weird Davy Crockett coonskin cap sort of look.
A Cooper's Hawk routinely patrols my feeders, too. I've got shrubs enclosed in deer-proof wire cages near my feeder, and I've seen some of the juncos and sparrows take refuge there.
George…
There is that truth, as Tennyson observed, of nature "red in tooth and claw." Though this doesn't, to me, imply we must observe without sentiment so much as through the lens of perspective. So much of what we think of as civilization is merely veneer, a façade masking reality. Life is amazing and beautiful, but it is also a sweaty, dirty, sometimes bloody business. For the hawk—as for us—eating is simply the mechanism for making it to tomorrow…providing a greater force, mistake, or plain bad luck doesn't take you out.
The photo was pretty straightforward; I was fortunate with lighting and background.
Joy K…
Both redtails and Coopers employ that same tactic around the cottage—a sneaky surprise high-speed, appearance inducing panic among potential victims, and the raptor's obvious "Ho, ho, ho! Who's gonna fly into something and knock themselves silly, so's I can swoop down and snatch ya up for lunch?" attitude.
I expect that's taught in hawk school…Food Procurement 101. It indeed works quite well.
Weaver…
When you think about it, this is a pretty savvy hunting tactic. If a hawk makes a regular "milk run" through neighborhood feeders, sooner or later it is bound to pay off with an easy target. Those escape route hideouts are important, though not always effective. And frankly, I wouldn't want them to be. A hawk taking a chickadee, a heron gulping a minnow, a fish eating a mayfly, a woodpecker gobbling a beetle…or me having a cheeseburger. We all eat to live, and I don't begrudge the hawk his meal.
Scott…
That greenery the Cooper's is perched on in the photo is my repurposed Christmas tree. My version of your wine-enclosed shrubs. I always put our old tree out, near the box elder—from which hangs a big seeder feeder plus a suet "cage" feeder, and where underneath, I scatter cracked corn. The dense tangle of green-needled branches gives startled birds a handy dash-to hideout…which they use all the time. I leave it in place until spring's new leaves appear—at which point I drag it to the compost heap.
Over the last few years I've witnessed literally hundreds of hawk "swoop-ins" and I can't tell you how many small birds have been saved by this temporary refuge. The hawk knows they are hiding in there, and generally lands atop the horizontal tree and sits awhile, sort of stomping around, looking this way and that, trying to get someone to lose their nerve and fly out. (Usually a fatal mistake, though not always.)
Often the frustrated hawk will hop down onto the ground and begin circling the tree, poking and peering in between the green limbs, trying to see into the shadowy interior. Hiding birds regularly squirt out the opposite side, and for the most part thus manage to escape. Occasionally the hawk will decide to plunge into the thicket of needled limbs. You'd think this would never work out. How could a hawk catch a sparrow or chickadee inside such a close-quarters mess? You'd expect every bird hiding in there to flush the moment the hawk began pushing and shoving its way in…but that's not the case, though it beats me why they stay. Paralyzing fear? I dunno. But they do and they get caught.
As prey, gray squirrels seem a bit big for a Cooper's to me. They catch them regularly, however—though they generally either dine in place, or retreat only a few yards to a nearby corner where they can, I guess, feel somewhat concealed and safe for long enough to have their meal. I was surprised when yesterday's bird, carrying the squirrel, made a long, angled flight across the river, rising in flight as it traveled.
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