We have a pair of Cooper's hawks that spend a good deal of time in our neighborhood keeping overwatch on the bird feeders. I have 2 interesting stories about these birds, one of which involves recent learned behavior.

First story: Our neighbor has a tennis court with a high fence at each end to serve as a ball stop. The female often sits the fence because it's about 90 yds distant from our back feeder and has a view of feeders both the front and back. She has adopted a pretty clever hunting strategy. She waits on the fence for bird activity on the back feeder. Then, instead of flying toward the birds, she flies quartering away. The birds take note and watch until she is out of sight, blocked from view by our home. She then turns toward the house, hidden from view, and develops a full head of steam and flies straight toward the eve side of the roof. She follows the roofline to the peak, breaking over the top of the house at maybe 60 mph with the birds on the feeder less than 20 ft away. If I had to guess, based on what I've seen, she is about 60% successful in her attempts, and her target choices are bluejays, mourning doves, and starlings.

Maybe it will be 3 stories because I forgot about the squirrels. I've never seen her attack a bird on the front feeder from the tennis court fence because they can see her and her intent clearly. What she does do, though is wait until a squirrel is nosing around the feeder. She's the only Cooper's I've ever seen take out squirrels, given they usually outweigh her by quite a bit - more than a pound, I'd say. The feeder is about 50 ft from the nearest tree and the tree is between the feeder and where she usually sits, so the squirrel would have to run at her to get to the tree. It doesn't. It tries to run away and can seldom outmaneuver a Cooper's.


I'll call this one "He Stoops ... HE SCORES!!!"
The male must still be a teenager because he's pretty clumsy. I see him all the time, but he's much less successful than his mate, but he often sits on OUR back fence, the one behind the female in the picture. On the other side of that fence is a low swale that fills with water in the spring. Cattails used to grow there, but now an invasive bamboo that's clogging up our wetlands is prevalent. I've often seen him leave the fence and fly into the bamboo. Yesterday he did this and just started thrashing about in the tangle. Suddenly his seemingly random movements became full of intent as he made sort of a clumsy stoop from only a couple of feet high. Then he mantled, which really got my attention. Sure enough, after about 2 minutes, he flew back to the fence with his prize, a fat vole, then to a nearby walnut tree a couple of minutes later where he made short work of it.

Al