Our Hawks
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 This is the hawk that spent a lot of the
fall, winter, and spring of 2000 - 2001 visiting our yard. From the size I believe it to be a Cooper's Hawk. My bird book describes a Cooper's Hawk and a Sharp Shinned Hawk as looking
about the same, the difference being in size. Since this was a huge bird, at least for our location, I will go with the Cooper's for the identification. The pictures here are not as good as I
would like, but they are all I was able to get. They are actually taken from video tape that I made of the hawk as he was
sitting in different trees around the backyard. Even though he didn't mind sitting in the yard, he definitely did not like it when you came out into the yard, so I had to do most of my taping from
just inside the patio door. In the picture above he was in a Sycamore tree about 100 feet from the patio door on an overcast day. The combination of distance and overcast skies are what
makes the picture such poor quality. On the other hand, this was the first year that I have ever seen a hawk in the yard more than once or twice in a year so we were thrilled.
This was the first time I had the chance to watch a hawk at relatively close quarters for extended periods of time. There are plenty of hawks in trees and on the power lines, but it is hard to watch
them while you are driving down the road at 55 mph, or faster on the interstates.
A little later in the year we had a small snow, just a few inches. While we were watching the snow out the patio door the hawk flew down and landed on the neighbors grape vine support.
He didn't really seem to mind the snow so much, but at the same time you got the impression that he wished it wasn't snowing.
When late spring rolled around our hawk, like all birds, turned his thoughts to mating. Since I had
only seen the one hawk in the yard I never thought about him finding a mate here. I was wrong. Late one evening, after the sun had set and just before it got dark, I saw our hawk in the trees with a new friend.
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This picture is
really poor, and I apologize. I wanted to include it because it is the hawk eating his dinner. I actually saw him swoop down and catch a bird, but I didn't have the camcorder running at
the time. I know that for some people it probably isn't all that amazing to see a hawk catch his dinner, but for me it was a real thrill to see it happen in my own backyard. After he caught the bird he
spread his wings wide to cover it while he got a better hold. Then he flew to this tree on the back corner of our yard, about 200 feet from the patio door and
about 50 feet up in the tree. I guess he felt secure there so he started eating his dinner. I have it on tape, but had the zoom all the way out to make the picture as big as possible at that range. It
looks better on the video, but I thought I would include a picture here so people could see an example of wildlife in the day to day activities. If you make your yard more hospitable to wildlife
you may get the chance to watch a hawk catch his meal first hand. It is much more interesting than watching it on a wildlife show on TV.
He didn't hang around too long, perhaps five minutes or so. Most of the time his visits to the yard were short, hardly ever more than ten minutes. He would fly into a tree and
look around for a little while, then move on. Sometimes he would move to another tree in the yard, sometimes he would head off into the woods on either side of our yard. On a good day you
would find him in the yard several times during the day, but they were always short visits. I think he preferred the thicker woods if he would be sitting for a while and only came through the yard
when he was looking for food. A lot of days I would see him in the thicker woods when I would go for a walk. There is a church a short
way from our house and they have a long driveway that comes out on our street. The drive goes from our street to the parking lot, all lined by woods, and then out to another street roughly in a
square that is half a mile long. Since I am supposed to walk a mile or more a day after the back operations this is the perfect walking route. There is now traffic on the church drives and very
little on the streets. Along the walk I would see many rabbits and squirrels, and once in a while the hawk. Depending on the season I would see other things like butterflies, different birds, bats
and so on. It's good to go for a walk and see all the other critters that we share our neighborhood with.
It's kind of hard to see any detail in the picture, but those two dark blobs in
the center are two hawks. I only saw the two of them together once or twice, but I feel sure they were a pair. It wasn't long before we didn't see the hawk in the yard anymore. I guess the
woods weren't thick enough here for home building. From late spring through most of the summer we never saw the hawks, and we did miss them. Then in August I heard a hawk calling from the
woods, and I feel sure it is the same one that visited us last winter. I have heard him a few times in the last month or so, but haven't seen him. Ann was the
lucky one, she said he flew into one of the trees a few days ago while Pooch was outside taking care of business. It was strange, but the hawk never seemed to mind Pooch being out in the yard
while he was around. I'm still waiting for my first sight of the hawk this year and I hope he, or perhaps they, will visit us often.