Birds Lucky catch at local hot spot

Jock Elliott

Hall of Famer
Location
Troy, NY
No brag, just fact: my wife and I are the proud owners of a local hot spot. Yup, our birdfeeder has been declared "The place to be" by a mob of about 50 sparrows.

Here's an example of the activity:

FZ200_birds_at_feeder_in_snowstorm_002-001_2_Medium_.JPG
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All the activity has attracted some other attention as well; yesterday what we believe is a Cooper's Hawk showed up, landed in tree next to the feeder and then dropped into a small thicket behind the feeder and stalked around on the ground, looking for, well, lunch. I was lucky enough to catch him at 800mm (e) with the FZ200. I was shooting two layers of plastic and two layers of glass, so the photo quality is, as the French say, "merde." Nevertheless, I consider myself lucky to have gotten the shot.

FZ200_Cooper_s_hawk_001-001_Medium_.JPG
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I've never seen this behavior in a hawk before.

Cheers, Jock
 
about a month ago I was parked outside of a house waiting a couple hours for an estate sale to start. I watched a hawk hiding on the ground in the bushes not too far from a feeder. Every so often, he would lunge into the air and after one of the unsuspecting birds. I saw around 10 misses and then one chase that took them very nearly out of sight and I think he got one. I had also never seen that behavior before.

When I was a kid, seeing a hawk was a pretty rare thing. I see them EVERYWHERE now. I wonder who a hawk's predator is?
 
about a month ago I was parked outside of a house waiting a couple hours for an estate sale to start. I watched a hawk hiding on the ground in the bushes not too far from a feeder. Every so often, he would lunge into the air and after one of the unsuspecting birds. I saw around 10 misses and then one chase that took them very nearly out of sight and I think he got one. I had also never seen that behavior before.

When I was a kid, seeing a hawk was a pretty rare thing. I see them EVERYWHERE now. I wonder who a hawk's predator is?

I have no idea who a hawk's predator is, but it is an excellent question!

At a falconry place, I once held a hawk on my arm, and they are even more impressive up close.

Cheers, Jock
 
The massive cemetery across the street from our house ( / unofficial arboretum... thing is 150 acres I think?) harbors a LOT of hawks. So many that it's very unusual for me to walk through it with eyes peeled and NOT see one in a low branch somewhere. I may have told the story already, but when our daughter was 0-10 months old, she had incredibly bad colic, wouldn't sleep more than 90 mins at a time, ever, period. So my wife and I would trade off weekend mornings, where one of us got to sleep in til about 10 while the other one got up with her at 6 and got her out of the house for as long as we could hold out. My go-to routine was walking her through the cemetery in a stroller, sometimes even napping on the ground next to her if she fell asleep. I was exhausted.

One day I put her on my chest in a carrier and climbed the huge stone tower they built in the 1870's or so. It's like a castle turret. here, I'll find a picture...

Here's the Mrs atop the same tower nowadays, to give you an idea of the view.
15469629115_02daf5b799_b.jpg
KBRX5806 by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Ok so uber-exhausted KillRamsey climbs this tower with his cranky infant daughter on his chest, so she has something to look at. And we get to the top, and we're looking around at the view, and something positively blasts past my head, maybe 5 or 6 feet away. Two somethings. All I heard was wings. I spin around to see what it was, and I see a hawk chasing a pigeon, HARD. Pigeon is banking and weaving, just like a scene out of Top Gun. They make a 180 and head back towards the tower, climbing back up to our level. And then less than 100 feet away, BANG, the hawk makes contact and grabs the pigeon. And what I recall is that it looked like fireworks... the puffball of feathers in mid-air exploded out a foot or two, then slooooowly drifted down to the ground. And I looked around to say DID YOU SEE THAT?! only to realize that we were alone. Nobody but the two of us saw it. The adrenaline rush was nice, and helped keep me awake a little longer.
 
The massive cemetery across the street from our house ( / unofficial arboretum... thing is 150 acres I think?) harbors a LOT of hawks. So many that it's very unusual for me to walk through it with eyes peeled and NOT see one in a low branch somewhere. I may have told the story already, but when our daughter was 0-10 months old, she had incredibly bad colic, wouldn't sleep more than 90 mins at a time, ever, period. So my wife and I would trade off weekend mornings, where one of us got to sleep in til about 10 while the other one got up with her at 6 and got her out of the house for as long as we could hold out. My go-to routine was walking her through the cemetery in a stroller, sometimes even napping on the ground next to her if she fell asleep. I was exhausted.

One day I put her on my chest in a carrier and climbed the huge stone tower they built in the 1870's or so. It's like a castle turret. here, I'll find a picture...

Here's the Mrs atop the same tower nowadays, to give you an idea of the view.
15469629115_02daf5b799_b.jpg
KBRX5806 by gordopuggy, on Flickr

Ok so uber-exhausted KillRamsey climbs this tower with his cranky infant daughter on his chest, so she has something to look at. And we get to the top, and we're looking around at the view, and something positively blasts past my head, maybe 5 or 6 feet away. Two somethings. All I heard was wings. I spin around to see what it was, and I see a hawk chasing a pigeon, HARD. Pigeon is banking and weaving, just like a scene out of Top Gun. They make a 180 and head back towards the tower, climbing back up to our level. And then less than 100 feet away, BANG, the hawk makes contact and grabs the pigeon. And what I recall is that it looked like fireworks... the puffball of feathers in mid-air exploded out a foot or two, then slooooowly drifted down to the ground. And I looked around to say DID YOU SEE THAT?! only to realize that we were alone. Nobody but the two of us saw it. The adrenaline rush was nice, and helped keep me awake a little longer.

Killramsey,

Awesome story!

I once saw a kestrel (sparrowhawk) take a small songbird off our other feeder. It was like, as you said, Top Gun.

As to the kids, the small boy who could rest his head on my shoulder while his toes were perched on my belt. Now he looks down at me and just graduated from college.

Merrrrry Christmas,

Jock
 
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