Cooper's Hawk to the Rescue

On the sad reality of nature colliding with human civilization:

A louder than usual crash called our attention to the sliding glass back door. Tragically, a beautiful white-breasted nuthatch had flown into the glass and fallen to the deck beneath the bird feeders. We watched, hoping it was only stunned and would fly off again, as most do, but no. Its rotating struggle on the floor of the deck indicated a broken wing. 

Almost immediately, while we were still debating what to do, an ever-alert Cooper's hawk swooped in and lit ominously on the deck banister.  The image of stealth, he looked around in all directions before dropping to the deck floor beside the hapless nuthatch. More cautious observation of his surroundings, then BAM! He pounced and sunk his talons deep into his small prey. Again he delayed gratification, looking around. Once certain of no competition, he tightened his grip, spread his impressive wings, and took off with our pitiable nuthatch dangling from his feet. Fifteen minutes later I heard his distinctive cackle in the near distance.  

Was he proclaiming his lucky day? His easy breakfast?

Gruesomeness notwithstanding, he had made the best of a tragic accident and relieved us of the responsibility of tending to the problem. Still, what a grim reminder of just two of the many ways humans have invaded the world of the songbird—our feeders and our windows. We don’t want to take down the feeders, and we sure aren’t taking out the glass door, but I will be asking my friends at Wildbirds Unlimited if they have some effective window decals next time I stock up on worms and seeds. That poor spinning nuthatch still haunts me.  

~dkm 6-16-23

Oh No!

Not the goldfinches!

Take the squirrels or chipmunks. Please. 

But not my songbirds!  

Taking feeders down, 

Cooper’s hawk twins of back yard, 

until you move on  

~dkm 51/52

Gardening in the Time of Covid 2

Planted in the rain
Full bloom in just a few weeks
Simple impatiens

Perhaps Sir Cooper

who comes here often to bathe

enjoys their beauty

May the hawk's presence

be a good omen not bad

And may he move on

~dkm 364/365

June 5, 2020

July 14, 2020

Cooper's Invasion

I'd been sitting long,
still, and silent, in the yard
when all four young hawks

flew in formation
past my ear from behind me
I felt the air stir

Two settled on branch
Two in the birdbaths, one each
Not sure they saw me

Gave new meaning to
Emily Dickinson's line,
"Zero at the bone."

A hawk in each birdbath
No songbirds at the feeders
Eaten? Or hiding?

These youngsters have been

here almost two weeks to date

Time for them to leave

~dkm 360/365

Hawk Talk

Cooper's hawk youngster
floats down to the banister
eyeing the feeders

He knows nothing of
his kind's reputation for
poaching at feeders

Yet already he
follows the protocol of
his genetic code

Fly low and nab them
at their most vulnerable:
just fledged or eating

You're a beautiful
specimen, young Cooper, sir
This I don't deny

But I'll be damned if
I let my unsuspecting songbirds
fall prey to your wiles

~dkm 356/365

Surprise Ending

Young hawks in backyard
Perching long on children's bench
Too far for photos

Still, I snapped a few
In hopes of blowing them up
For a closer look

One soon flew away
The other stayed for awhile
Then flapped to the ground

Not until enlarged
did the photograph reveal
The two sun bathers

~dkm 355/365

On the Fence

These newly fledged hawks
explain the crying we've heard
from the neighbor's yard

And the kerfuffles
of late in the trees, and the
feathers in the grass

Regal but brutal
I know of course they must hunt
but please not right here

May they all find their
new territories post haste
I wish them godspeed

~dkm 354/365

Photo credit: Philippe Rosak

Cooper's Hawk on Their Birdbath

Songbird alarm calls

Drew me out of house in time

to catch him in flight 

~dkm 328/365

Backyard Spectator, Returned

It's been nearly two years since my last post, and I've missed longsitting outside. If this new start takes hold, it will be good for my health.

This morning I'm watching a smallish hawk with a fuzzy brown head and the shorter tail of a recent fledgling. I don't know its gender, but I wish it to be female.

She's perched high in the backyard tulip poplar, spreading and twisting her wing feathers occasionally, but not moving from her spot.  Her mother (or father?) flies overhead, calling to her with a rapid repeated cackle, but she sits on, looking forlorn and vulnerable in her new world. Is she reassured, as I am on her behalf, by the knowledge that her parent is nearby?

For a few days I mistook the parent's distinctive cackle for the call of a pileated woodpecker. I thought it may have had a nest near where I was tilling the first soil of the season, and that it didn't like my presence in the garden.  It probably didn't, but it wasn't a woodpecker.

When the cackler in question flew over the Ya-yas, who were doing yoga on the back deck one morning, we followed it with binoculars to the top of the neighbor's tallest tree, where we discovered it was a hawk. Our search was rewarded with the sighting of another slightly smaller hawk on the branch beneath a large nest. It tottered on the branch for a few minutes before taking a wobbly flight to another tree. The parent hawk led the way, circling back and cackling in a mode of alert protection. We think we were lucky enough to have witnessed the young hawk's moment of fledge. The parent likely had its eye on those four strange yoga practitioners who were threatening the safety of its offspring.

A little more research on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, narrowed our guess to Cooper's hawk, whose cry is indeed similar to a pileated woodpecker's and is seldom heard except in defense of nest. Bingo. In the days since, I've heard the cry often.

Chances are, the young Cooper's hawk in the tulip poplar is our yoga fledgling from earlier in the week, taking backyard spectatorship to new heights. I've been sharing the breath of the universe with her for almost an hour. It's good to be back.    dkm

Shalom to Winter . . .

. . . and honor to the squirrels of the nest in the Bradford Pear outside my window---the same nest I wrote about on Dec 13 in "Hey, Hawk!" Usually the squirrels build their nests too high in the trees to observe closely on a regular basis, but this one is low and near enough to the window by which I drink my early morning coffee that I've observed it all winter. I didn't see it being built, and only first noticed it when the leaves of the pear tree fell away in November. Watching a squirrel's nest on any given day could never be considered a rewarding habit, but in the course of a winter of morning meditations over coffee, enough activity has accumulated in my memory to be worthy of comment.

First there was the Dec 13 invasion by the Cooper's hawk who stabbed at the nest and threw out dry leaves amid the outrage of the house finches. I wondered at the time if the nest was active or abandoned, because as far as I knew, the hawk only searched it, and did not find a meal there before the finches chased it off.

The next noticeable activity came on the morning of the third day of continuously below-freezing temperatures after our January ice storm, in an observation that touched my heart. Two house finches were clinging to the underside of the nest, apparently gleaning the warmth that leaked from the nest's interior. I assumed this was an indication that at least one warm-blooded squirrel was burrowed inside the nest, and I liked to think it hinted at a cooperative living arrangement whereby the squirrels lent warmth to the finches in January in exchange for the favor of chasing the hawk from their nest in December. Whether by agreement or random response to a need makes no difference. That it happened at all was a phenomenon I found sweet and paradoxical, given the otherwise brutal nature of life in the wild.

Later we had a week of unseasonably warm weather between our Jan & Feb snows, and during that week two squirrels busied themselves bringing leaves to the nest in an industrious display of homemaking activity that I observed on only one morning. I know not if they were fortifying for another possible cold spell, or preparing for an upcoming birth, but I'm committed to watching them throughout the spring season, which seems suddenly to have arrived, if today's warm air and returning orchestration of birdsong are any indication. dkm

p.s. The photo of the nest in question was taken on the day after the light snow of Feb 9 & 10.

Hey, Hawk!

"You thief, you! Get outta there!" I think it was a Cooper's hawk---horizontal tail stripes, no red shoulder, no red tail, medium sized. It would not be deterred, no matter how loud or close I was, which was only a few giant steps from the tree where it was ravaging a squirrel's nest--- and no matter how many indignant house finches flitted around in the same tree scolding.

Silent it came at first, unbeknownst to me. I was fluffing bows on window-wreaths across the front of the house, making my own noise in the leaves underfoot, when I became aware of much small bird chatter in the Bradford pear tree above and behind my left shoulder---the kind of chatter that usually signals trouble in birdworld. I can't always discover the source of the trouble, but this time it was easy. By now all the leaves have fallen, so the hawk, the nest, and at least a dozen fiery red house finches were clearly visible.

When the shouting didn't work I tried to stare it down. It stopped long enough to look down on me, but showed not a care. The finches and I were no threat---they for their size, me because I was bound to the ground. I was surprised at the pluck of the housefinches, actually, and wondered why they cared about a squirrel's nest. But I felt solidarity with them as I tried to shoo this hawk away. Its arrogant response was to hop to the edge of the nest to stab at the interior with its talons, far above my reach. Slap slap slap. Rattle, rattle, rattling in the dry leaves of the nest---while we watched!

Never mind the natural order of the Georgia ecosystem, the food-chain and all, or that our yard is overrun with squirrels. It was the idea of tearing up someone else's nest in broad daylight amid the righteous outcries of the little guys that agitated me. I'm tempted to make a political comparison, but have sworn to keep politics out of this blog. So make of it what you will. A better ending to the post would be to quote the Buddhist notion my daughter encourages.

"Know that it is, but do not suffer from it."

Thank you, Sarah. It works for indignations large and small. dkm

Apology to a Small Creature

Early this morning, within my peripheral vision, something large, silent, and swift descended into one of the hydrangeas near the deck where I sat contemplating the hummingbirds at the feeder. This is the season in which hummingbirds come by twos, threes, and fours, nattering away at each other. I had intended to write about their tiny hanging feet today, but the Cooper's Hawk in the hydrangea instantly changed my focus.

A noisy rustling skirmish in the leaves under the bush indicated the hawk's success at hunting its breakfast, but then---oh terrible then---it abandoned the prey it had only maimed, spread its powerful wings, and flapped twice to perch on the back of a patio chair facing away from me, not ten yards from where I sat. I know not if it was aware of my presence when it first attacked the hapless creature below, but now it turned its head and looked me in the eye. I hadn't moved except to turn my head toward the skirmish. Was I the reason the hawk so cruelly left that poor creature to an agonizing death? I shuddered at the piteous konk-konk-konk-konking in the throat of the small dying thing, whatever it was. I could see the movement of the leaves, and hear the konks, but could not identify it---could have been a bird or a chipmunk hidden in the dry leaf cover.

After a few seconds of eyeing me from the chair, the young hawk, with horizontally striped tail and white splotchy feathers in its back, flapped to a new perch on the fence, where it stayed for several minutes before offing into the woods with only two flaps and a glide. A few minutes later, it startled me again by flap-flap-gliding past my shoulder, low and close enough for me to hear the whir of its wings against the air, though it did not return to the place of its terrible deed. Again it disappeared into the woods. Had it been stalking me to see if it was safe to return to its breakfast? Is this the same young hawk that has watched me garden?

From under the hedge adjacent to the hydrangea, where the maimed prey was somehow able to take refuge, the konking slowly, gradually, terribly, grew weaker and weaker, until it stopped after about ten minutes.

It is not to my credit that I was too squeamish to assist it to a faster death. I have neither the heart nor the stomach for such a task. But now I must live with the aural memory of those diminishing konks, wondering at my responsibility in this event.

The hummingbird feet will keep until a later post. dkm