Bye, bye birdie
By adamg - Tue, 01/06/2009 - 12:34am.
Third Decade reports winning a battle of wills with a hawk carrying some breakfast this morning. However, he did not pick up the spoils of victory, since he didn't have much need for a freshly killed squirrel.
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Boston Bird Behavior
The Charles River is a good venue for interesting bird behavior.
One photo I still have is from when a large hawk(?) and a small bird were flying together, with the small bird seeming to fly of the back of the large one and then later returned:
http://www.neilvandyke.org/weblog/2006/09/#2006-09-28
Someone suggested after that blog post that they were two different varieties of bird.
Someone else suggested that perhaps the small bird was actually defending a nest by attacking the large bird (which sounds similar to the behavior of squirrels when they'll run from the tree to the ground and clearly taunt a dog).
I used to have some better series of photos from another interesting event over the Charles, shot from the Longfellow. A seagull got a fish in its beak(?), and another seagull apparently wanted it. They commenced a high-speed swooping aerial chase, back and forth across the width of Charles, with dynamics reminiscent of dogfighting scenes from Top Gun. I'd seen a lot of seagulls, but never seen them move like that.
Power Breakfast
Me thinks there was something else afoot than just TD's gentle word. Hawks, particularly the red tailed variety around here are not concerned about furless bipeds. They routinely tear apart and devour the best parts of prey such as squirrels with humans a few feet away.
Maybe it was the tiger TD was carrying?
That would chase off a hawk, right?
Also, I'm concerned with how often hawks have been showing up lately. Don't they know this is a city?
Many raptors like cities -
Many raptors like cities - eg Peregrine Falcons are a well-established urban species (like the ones that live atop the Custom House).
I was doing some work on my roof during the brief one-day "heat" wave we had a couple weeks ago and a Northern Goshawk landed in the oak tree above our house - maybe 15 feet from me. Very beautiful - these birds are a fair bit larger and the adults lack the rusty tones of the Coopers Hawks commonly seen around here.
The goshawk stayed in the upper branches of the oak for about 10 minutes - just checking out the 'hood - until a Mockingbird decided she'd been there long enough and proceeded to harass her by flying up at the goshawk from within the inner branches of the oak, which were too closely gathered for the big bird to get down into. After doing her best to ignore the little noisemaker for a couple minutes, she nonchalantly made her way off.
(Then he went and did a little victory twirl in front of a cluster of sparrows who'd watched the whole thing from the phone lines across the street. I could almost see their eyes rolling as they muttered "oh brother" to each other.)
Lots o' food
Look at all the squirrels, rats, etc. that a hawk has to feed on and it makes sense. Animals go where the food is.