Urban hawk attacks 12

hawk I received a strange phone call yesterday from my youngest daughter. "Dad, a hawk is eating Pinkfoot!" Pinkfoot was my daughter's Bantam hen, which won Best in Show at the fair this summer. I raced home to find a fairly large hawk making short work of said hen and it had no intention of leaving until finished with its meal. I don't know what species it is. Maybe someone can identify it in the comments. My daughter was upset but not unduly so. She wants to be a farmer when she grows up and knows chickens have eyes on the sides of their heads for a reason.

I heard a robin going ballistic earlier in the day and had wondered about it. You don't usually hear the sound of upset robins except in the spring when they're defending their nests and fledglings from crows and cats. In hindsight I realize that the robin was probably harassing this particular hawk. Our neighbor has a pear tree that attracts lots of birds. My guess is that the plethora of birds attracted this hawk, which was probably sitting in the pear tree watching my daughter's chickens in their coop. We won't be letting the chickens out into the yard for the next several days. Coincidentally, two of my relatives (who both live in cities) have also had birds eaten by hawks in their back yards this year.

Farmers have and always will be locked in a battle with biodiversity. I view farms as unnatural necessary evils. We have to eat, but they drive species to extinction all over the planet -- the fewer, the better. The last thing we should be doing is expanding them to fuel our cars.

My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.

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  1. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 12:02 pm
    24 Sep 2008

    Sharp-shinned HawkThey hunt as a cast of hawks, the perimeter members squeal driving prey birds to the one holding motionless for the kill.  Unlike other hawks they often feed on birds near homes, especially bird baths.  These hawks prefer small birds but will go after Pileated woodpeckers.  We have a cast on our conservancy that we have watched over they last couple decades.  They are highly territorial during the summer. You can hear them squeal for hours almost every day. Your cast will likely leave the area late November and come back next year.  Cover your run with well staked chicken wire.

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  2. PBrazelton Posted 2:03 am
    25 Sep 2008

    DittoWe had a hawk gliding around our city run yesterday - it was a bit disconcerting seeing such a large raptor so close.  My very first instinct was 'kill it!', which I suppose is the first response any human has towards things threatening their family.  Of course I will do no such thing, but I found it interesting how built-in the instinct is.
    I understand that a decent sized hawk could take a bantam, but what about a standard?  We have bantams and full sized birds, and I'm wondering if a hawk would try to tackle on of my Dominiques.  They're BIG birds.

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  3. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 2:51 am
    25 Sep 2008

    Well, this is either a sharp-shinned hawk or a coopers hawk. The common name for the coopers is "chicken hawk." Certainly a red tailed hawk would not hesitate and I wouldn't bet that this hawk couldn't take one down. Life on the farm ....

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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  4. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 8:53 am
    25 Sep 2008

    LegsWe have Cooper's Hawks, more wary unless thirsty.  I think you shot a good photo of a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk, thin legs and a square tail.
    It could be worse.  A champion breeder of carrier pigeons released his stock out here and our nesting Peregrine Falcons took one out directly above us.  Spectacular flight drama.  Fast birds.  Peregrines love pigeons.  He lost $500 or several thousand dollars if it was one of his two champions, said he will never again release birds on Fox Island.  

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  5. caniscandida Posted 3:52 pm
    25 Sep 2008

    Poor chicken!But in fact she suffered a fate which was precisely what victors in the ancient Olympic Games were advised to pray for: Win the big prize in sight of everyone, then return home in triumph, and finally die, as soon as possible -- because you will never be so happy again in your life, no matter how long you live.
    I agree that the hawk is either a young Sharpie or a female Cooper's.  The proportions -- small head, long legs, long tail -- are right for Accipiter.  The shape of the tail ought to be diagnostic, but this one has fanned out its tail, so its "true" shape is hard to tell.
    Its size also is hard to tell from this photo.  But inasmuch as it killed a chicken, that would favor its being a Cooper's.  Sibley says of the 11"-long Sharpie: "Hunts from concealed perch or in low patrolling flight; captures small [!] birds by surprise in lightning-quick strikes, using bushes and ground as cover.  Our smallest [!] accipiter ... "  And of the 16.5"-long Cooper's: "Feeds on small birds and mammals captured in surprise attack.  A medium-size accipiter; always larger than Sharp-shinned Hawk, but size difficult to judge."  Still, size might not matter; in Central Asia, eagles have been trained to kill wolves, mein Gott!
    Two curious features:


    Neither Sibley nor Peterson shows white on the scapulars, which is plainly visible in this photo.  But Donald L. Malick, illustrating both Sharpie and Cooper's in the National Geographic field guide, shows white on the scapulars in both.  Also, both eligible forms are identified as immature females.
    The most distal dark stripe on the tail does not seem so broad as the next one in, something which none of my illustrations shows.  But that could be the effect, again, of the spreading of the tail.


    By the same token, if we were to observe the tail in a less dilated posture, it is likely that the white at the tips would seem broader, which would tend to rule out the Sharpie and favor the Cooper's.

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

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  6. naught101 Posted 2:19 pm
    02 Oct 2008

    go Vego!No one ever thinks about the carrots, damn it. Imagine being pulled up by your roots - it'd be like being starved to death - or death from pneumonia, if you were put in a fridge.
    Anyway, farms might be necessary, but farmed animals aren't. Go permaculture/vegetarian, and you're sorted.
    Otherwise, you could just grow more chickens, enough to increase the population of hawks, then eat some hawks as well...

    check out http://www.envirowiki.info, the knowledge database for environmentalists and activists.

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  7. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 3:05 pm
    02 Oct 2008

    The hawk is still hanging aroundThere is a deathly silence in my back yard. The pear tree that is normally full of sqwaking birds this time of year is a ghost town.

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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  8. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 11:34 pm
    02 Oct 2008

    A cast of hawks?We have the same event here, no song birds and a cast of hawks.  Last week I saw them debating each other with some really strange growling sounds.  We also have a Cooper's Hawk surprising larger sea birds sitting on the Sound in thick fog.

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  9. Whiskerfish Posted 5:53 pm
    28 Nov 2008

    99% sure juv Cooper's hawkThis is a juvenile Accipiter, 99% sure a Cooper's Hawk.
    - vertical streaking on breast, general brown top tells me it's a juv.
    (Note: juvenile birds will often go for easier prey; domestic animals do not usually have the same predator avoidance awareness as wild animals. Most raptors that come into conflict w farmers are juvs who haven't yet learned to take on more 'difficult' wild prey.)
    Why a Cooper's and not a Sharp-shinned?


    I can't tell the size of the bantam exactly, but if it's the size of 'regular' bantams then this hawk is way too big to be a sharpie. Sharpies are tiny. Really tiny.
    also, streaks on breast are narrower and less rufous than you would expect streaks on breast of a Cooper's to be, although the image doesn't show these so well.


    Accipiters are notoriously tough to ID -- at least in N America you only have 3 to choose from. In the rest of the world it's often another story. (I had Accipiter rufiventris displaying over my house a coupla days ago. I also often see Accipiter tachiro overhead, and occasionally also Accipiter melanoleucus. Ha ha. Where am I?)
    Cheers
    Whiskerfish

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  10. Whiskerfish Posted 5:57 pm
    28 Nov 2008

    White on scapularsis only visible because this bird has fluffed out the feathers in that area. If it was sitting upright and at rest you probably would not see any white as you would only see the edges for the feathers, which are dark.
    And you thought bird ID was simple ;) I have 20 yrs experience and I still get caught short!
    Cheeers
    Whiskerfish

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  11. Whiskerfish Posted 6:01 pm
    28 Nov 2008

    Hawk habitsBTW Accipiters are known to come back repeatedly to sites with unsecured chickens; they figure out where the easy meat is. I would keep the remainder of your domestic birds under wire for a good few weeks so as not to get your local hawk habituated... it needs to learn that there's not much point in hanging around, that there are easier pickings elsewhere.
    Cooper's Hawk is colloquially known as Chickenhawk particularly in the south of the US. That's not an accident.
    Whiskerfish

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  12. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 2:05 am
    29 Nov 2008

    Thanks for the positive ID, WhiskerfishSunflower seemed to be right about there being more than one hawk involved. For the past two months the damn hawks would reappear every time I let the bantam out. There was a smaller one involved as well. My guess is male and female fledgling nest mates.
    Just yesterday my brother-in-law (in response to reading about our hawk problem) told me about a bald eagle he saw eating a duck on the end of a dock. The dock owner made the mistake of trying to shoo the eagle away and got chased off the dock instead.

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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