[Bristol-Birds] The politics of being a Cooper's Hawk
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:26:00 -0400
The politics of being a Cooper's Hawk --
"the woods are lovely dark and deep
but I have promises to keep . . . ."
Momma 'Coon and her July 2 baby parade.
July 2 was a special day in the woods beyond our terrace. It marked
special moments of a special spring breeding season.
It is tough raising young 'uns in the wild when a mother does not have
video games, TV, e-mail, cell phones, text or BlackBerry®. She has
to provide her own baby sitting -- 24/7 !
Yea. You are correct. The aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets
ripening to a black or dark purple fruit, the "blackberry", are a fruit
mom will depend on. It is not a berry, no matter what your mamma
taught you. Baby coons do not care about botanical correctness.
She has raised her young in a cavity behind our back wall for the
past two years. I know she is there. I can see the two big paths
she has worn in the underbrush leading down to the den. She has
nursed them here for at least 10 to 12 weeks but they are old enough now
to go on hunting trips with mom and hunt real blackberries. Their diet is
about 80 percent vegetation these days. This mom has been one
to take her babies out for short daytime strolls. All coon moms are not
that confident. Or at least they do not all live in a virtual sanctuary
of protection and provisions. Urban life is good to the Procyon lotor.
They thrive.
I first saw her this year on July 2, just one day after I had determined
that the Cooper's Hawk, nesting just a few yards away, had fledged her
young. All of the baby coons were out for an Independence Day weekend
stroll and they had their own parade along our brick wall. I got my camera
and got my photos. They just looked at this stranger with great
curiosity. This is the first time any of them had seen a digital camera.
I think the kids liked it and each one wanted one. That's the way the
beat goes on in this point and click society.
Both momma Cooper's Hawk and momma Raccoon are single parent
gals raising young on their own. They have right much in common.
Neither of them will let their male mates near the young. Both species
are furious and skillful predators in their own rights. They are keen hunters
and good defenders of their offspring.
The female Cooper's Hawk (we call her Queen Accepter) was, for weeks,
a sentinel of her nest from a big limb on a tall oak almost directly above the
coon den.
The big female Cooper's is a savvy and very politically correct resident
of our yard. Her "promise to keep" is to do everything in the best interest
of safely raising her young.
For several days in the last week of June, my daily check of whitewash
from the dropping sprayed over the edge of the nest and clinging to the
under story below had quickly and greatly diminished. The last big rain
leading up to the July 4th weekend, virtually washed away the last sign
of nestlings very high in the crown of our White Pine along the driveway.
Since much of the tell-tell whitewash seemed to be concentrated more
heavily in one spot, I suspected she had what students of raptor biology
know as a "brancher." That is an early and well developed young that
leaves the nest ahead of its siblings and is more competitive at food
delivery time. They sometimes take a tumble and become fairly evident
in the lower branches. That was evidently not the case.
Queen Accepter's main strategy as a successful nesting raptor, was to
avoid any more commotion or detection than absolutely necessary.
She never showed interest in our many bird feeders surrounding the
patio. The small birds fed regularly and always seemed oblivious or
simply unconcerned with her presence.
Raccoon probably never detected the presence of the high tree nest.
or It would have been a quick dinner of nestlings. She is known to be a
problem at Cooper's Hawks nest throughout their common range.
Smaller songbirds such as the chickadees, titmice and especially the
nuthatches early on found the female Cooper's at her lookout not far
from her nest. At first they offered half-hearted protests. The hawk did
not feel very threatened or defensive. She made no effort to grab one
when it came a little close. I watched this for long periods of time. The
Blue Jays and many crows appeared not to detect her.
Her need was to remain as low key and as non confrontational as
possible. Early on I felt she had just accepted me as part of the landscape
but I later suspected she had included me as one of the neighbors she did
not want to have discovered her nearby perched.
The female Raccoon did not go to a lot of trouble to hide all signs of her
presence. I guess her mode of operation made her a little more easy to
detect. The dirt slides or trails down the bank to her ground den were
obvious enough. The discovery of our new bird feeder twisted down
to the ground from its shepherd crook hanger
was not so quickly a coon clue.
For a neighborhood with a bout of mid-summer
Black Bear prowling and residential feeder
damage, the coon was not an immediate
mammal of "interest" as the police would say.
A quick check found no damage to the feeder
but seed all over the ground. No claw marks or
teeth marks. No effort to smash or gash into
the feeder. No scratches on the pole. But she
quickly became a key suspect because at one
time or another, she has dismantled or taken
down every feeder we have. She is hard to
discourage.
This crime was easy. Raccoon had found this a
convenient source of food. Her jump from the wall
to the feeder provided more weight than the
fragile and thin aluminum pole could bare and it
all went down in one big twist. I did notice during
the coon parade that she several times wanted to drop down from the wall
to the scattered seed but realized she would have to go too far away from
the young and never got up her nerve. She stayed tight with them.
Cooper's Hawk was last seen leaving her virtually undiscovered nest on
July 1 when she flashed from the crown of the tall pine and went to her
usual lookout limb in the oak. However, she was very nervous and paced
back and forth on the limb. She always looked down and frequently
twisted and turned for a better look into the limbs below. She flew down
for a short period and then changed perches several times.
A hunting Cooper's usually simply bolts from the tree in a flash of wings.
She does not usually run around and carry on trying to see what she
wants to chase. She will run after prey on the ground. Contrary to the
Cooper's, it's near cousin, the Sharp-shinned Hawk, will often run a few steps
along a branch before taking flight or launching after prey. That is a good
ID point for accepters leaving a perch when you have not otherwise had a good
look.
She had a fledgling in the under story. The smaller songbirds loved all
the excitement and made a big fuss. Nothing came of that encounter.
During the next few days the woods were uncharacteristically noisy with
fussing Blue Jays and other similar-size species that could get up the
courage or interest to join little frays here and there with what I thought
was most likely the young hawks.
On Tuesday of this week (July 8), we arrived home and pulled into our
driveway. A very brown Cooper's Hawk flew up from our one-story level
of the roof and flew above the second-story level. A second later an
almost identical Cooper's Hawk flew from the same spot and followed.
The Blue Jays in the far corner of our lot took up the chase.
My gut feeling was that they were both fledglings which had found the
roof a good place to sun and watch for mom approaching with food.
Mom is a little darker than the light brown I thought I saw. It is possible
one was mom and the other was a young which had been fed on the
roof. That is the last time I've seen her or babies.
Won't be able to say the same for coon and her clan. They will make
maybe one more or two appearances before moving on in late summer.
Last year they were seen hiking down the driveway one night. Another
evening the shinning eyes were peeking around our wooden bridge
as she led them up out of the bed of Cedar Creek where they love to
fish for crawdad and I suppose fish. It is not uncommon to find little piles
of crayfish remains here and there in my driveway. I think they bring
them there to eat. Not all so sure about that. For several years I
thought it was the evidence of Eastern Screech-Owl. The owl has
disappeared here in recent years and one is seldom heard. That doesn't
mean that much of the earlier evidence did not come from the owl or
from one or more wild creatures.
The little piles of crayfish remains are still discovered from time to time.
There are many other possibilities of just exactly who that fisherfauna
(a poor synonym excuse for fisherman) might be. There are no
doubts who has dominion over this hillside woodlot and captures
the fascination of my mind.
Let's go birding . . .
Wallace Coffey
Bristol TN
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