[Bristol-Birds] Cooper's Hawk is feeding babies.

We enjoyed nearly an hour getting to know each other
much better, this evening.

It was agreed:  I could be curious and she could be
cautious.  A fair enough compromise with a Cooper's
Hawk near her nest.

She enjoyed a long spell of picking at whatever pests
must be annoying her and fluffing her body feathers,
spreading her tail and shaking her plumage.  Most
of the time she was so fluffed out that she looked like
a small buteo.  But when she tucked it in, she was
long and lean and looked a little mean.

I tried to wait her out to see if she would go to the treetop
where I believe the nest is located.  She has been in
and out of there several times.

At 7:20 p.m. she was more focused on her surroundings.
She watched a medium size songbird with a little intensity
but paid almost no attention to the flitting of the smaller
birds like chickadees and the titmouse.

It was obvious she had grown a little restless and was
posturing to leave her perch.  Within a blink of the eye
she dashed off through the woods leaving the nest well
behind.  I watched closely with binoculars.

She rose quickly to a long flat branch a few hundred
feet from the nest.  She leaned forward and took a
couple of deliberate steps and began to gently prod
the top of the limb with her beak.

Shortly she turned to face me and held a chunk of
red meat about the size of a golf ball tight in the clutch
of one foot.  There was no fur or feathers evident.
Was this a butcher block, as raptor biologist call such
structures where prey are brought to be picked clean
of feathers and such ?  She did not pluck feathers or
fur while I watched.  There was not enough time.  None
were seen to fall from the limb.  She barely manipulated
the meat.

She jumped from the limb and flashed down thru the
understory, folding her wings and threading her way
for what seemed like a hundred feet or more with them
tucked to her side like a downhill ski jumper.

As she passed I could not see her tarsus, feet or the food.
They were pulled well up into her ventral feathers.  I
was now much more keenly aware that she can bring
food to the young but I will not always see a bloody
Blue Jay dangling lifelessly. 

Had she used the flat limb as a cache for later feeding ?
As when she had fed all of the hungry beaks earlier but 
put a little back for a bedtime snack.

Approaching the white pine tree where the nest must be,
she quickly flapped a few times and climbed almost
vertically.  This trip seemed to end a foot or more
out form the trunk of the tree where I think the nest is.  
It is not unusual for raptors to land a little short of the
nest in order not to have all the hungry and lunging mouths
from grabbing the morsel until she can appropriately 
distribute the food on a more even basis.  I did not hear
any cries or chirps for food.  She has been seen to go
quickly to the site and then leave within mere seconds.

Cooper's Hawks frequently chose white pines as nest
sites.  Hardwoods are more seldom selected.  This
species is notorious for nesting in the highest part of
the crown while many other hawks nest well down in
the canopy.  Cooper's will nest lower if in hardwoods.

The young should be only a few days old and the 
female keeps the male away from the nest and young
at this age.  He does not always understand that they
are not potential small prey at such and early age.

It makes you wonder if the flat limb was a handoff point
where the male brought food and left it for the female.
During incubation and early brood days, he brings most
of the needed food to her.  However, it is more common
for her to fly out and meeting him to get the food.  That
may well have happened earlier before I joined her for
the last hour or so before bedtime.  Perhaps he brought
it up and left it on the limb and I did not notice the offering
while she saw it immediately and flew to that branch.

During our long prelude to the feeding scene, she was
perched with her back to me.  This is the first time she
has been near the nest and not facing it.  

This bird is definitely a female.  The feathers of her back
or quite brown.  Not blue as in an adult male at this season.
Her eye is yellow -- she does not have the more red or
orange eye of an older bird.  She has begun to molt her
tail feathers and one central feather is fresh with the black
bars offering a little more contrast.  This feather is about
one-half inch shorter than the most outer tail feathers.
The tail appears more square but she has the distinct
markings of a Cooper's tail.  The crown is black.  The sides
of her neck brown.  When she took a good stretch and 
extended her wing well down from her perch,  it was noticeable
that her wing was mostly uniformly brown with some fine black
spots in the upper surface.

I have not yet seen a known male in the immediate vicinity
of the nest.  He does help incubate the eggs and brings her
food at the nest while she is incubating.  I have not seen
any of that.  We did briefly see two birds dashing about
together in the woods about a hundred feet from the nest,
a few weeks ago.

Let's go birding.......

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN

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