On a cold morning a few weeks ago I looked out the window of my Humboldt Park apartment and saw the aftermath of a violent attack. The perpetrator was still tearing apart the victim right out in the open. I went outside, stealthily made my way to a nearby porch, and trained my binoculars on a branch above me, where a young Cooper’s hawk was eviscerating a bird that was too far gone to identify, its down and feathers sinking on a light breeze to the snow below.
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Soon I was talking to Dick Bates, a retired banker and confessed “bird feeder”–he hangs out one of those canisters of seed that keep chickadees, finches, and even cardinals in a state of dependence. “I never saw that hawk catch a bird,” he told me. “My feeder is tubular. It’s encaged, so the pigeons and the big birds can’t get at the food. The first time I saw the hawk he was perched in the courtyard. It was quiet. All the little birds had scattered. It was during that hard cold spell, below zero. The sparrows, they go through 40 pounds of seed a week. That hawk was very patient, very still. I went out, and when I came back an hour later he had something. I couldn’t tell what, and at first I thought it was a mouse or a rat. I think they like squirrels better anyway. But then I saw the feathers.”
Like their cousins the sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks feed primarily on other birds. They’re forest hunters given to high-speed pursuits and tight, sinuous turns. In city parks I’ve more than once heard an insistent wing beat from a flock of pigeons taking off and turned to see them separating, some swirling right, others left, while in the center a single bird veers and strains, a hawk a few feet behind.
The agility that allows these hawks to chase their prey through tangled forests serves them well in the cluttered urban landscape around feeders, but they’re also capable of stealth and intimidation. The hawk at Bates’s feeder simply sat very still, camouflaged in the crook of a tree, patiently waiting for the sparrows it had scattered to come back to the feeder. Other local birders tell of Cooper’s hawks flying at bushes to scare birds into the open or simply landing on the ground and pushing under the foliage.
Wherever they’re hatching, Cooper’s hawks seem to have found their urban niche. A recent AP report describes one that took up residence inside a Home Depot in Ohio. The store managers said they planned to leave the bird alone until it cleared out all the pigeons and sparrows living in the store. But the most dependable food supply may be the backyard feeder. Cornell University does a national survey of birds spotted at feeders, mostly in urban and suburban backyards, and publishes an annual top-25 list by state. Cooper’s hawks entered the Illinois chart three years ago in 25th place. Last winter they were in 23rd. We’re likely to see more of these beautiful raptors veering around three-flats and scattering birds outside the window.
