> Once a few years ago I almost hit a sharpie with my car. The hawk was in
> such hot pursuit (1 foot off the fringillid's tail) that common sense had
> totally left it. The birds flew across one street 1 foot off the ground
> and about the same distance off my bumper in front of me, between two
> houses, across the other street and were still going 1 foot apart when
> they went around another house and out of sight. No results to report.

OK...feats of flying, accipter sub-catagory...

Since I band hawks every fall at a migration site, I get to see a fair
number of them.

One of the more impressive feats I saw involved a sharpie perched in
a limber pine, perhaps 60-70 ft. up. A junco flew up an perched about
halfway up towards the sharpie, not seeing the accipter which was perched
perhaps a foot from the trunk, as was the junco. The sharpie dove
straight down, weaving between the branches in vertical flight. There
was perhaps a foot or two distance between each branch - we're talking
major slalom course, here! The junco saw the attack coming, and flew
straight upwards at the last minute.

The sharpie "hit the brakes" as they passed, did a 180-degree u-turn
in an instant and began weaving UP the trunk, 'tween the branches,
chasing the junco. After about a 20 ft or so vertical chase, the
junco bailed out of the tree and lit dashed over the cliff upon which
it sits - sharpie in hot pursuit. I didn't see the end.

But, that u-turn was the most amazingly quick and accurate bit of
aerobatics I've seen. Not the turn itself, but the execution in a
thicket of branches.

On another note, an interesting "tough bird" story:

On my last day on this project four years (not four score, I'm old,
but not THAT old!) ago, I went and trapped with a couple of other
experienced folks that I normally don't get to work with as we tend
to put rookies with us old farts - a goodbye party, of sorts.

Caught an adult red-eyed male Cooper's hawk. One of the other banders
went out to retrieve it from the bownet. Rather than sticking it
in the can he'd brought with him to restrain it, he carried it back
with a funny look on his face. Couldn't get it into the can.

Why? Bird had a stick about the thickness of a pencil and about six
inches long rammed through its rump just above the tail!

My first thought, of course, was that it was a trapping injury (always
blame myself before nature!) but there aren't trees or brush around the
trap, and close examination and little tugging, etc made it clear that
the stick had been inserted through the Coop long ago! By "poofing"
its feathers at the entry points, you could see that the skin had
grown around it and it was more-or-less a permanent feature.

This bird was an after-second-year bird, i.e. in at least its third
year of life, and its deep red eye suggested an even greater age.
We didn't weigh it (how much did the stick weigh?) but it was a fat
bird, very healthy. Obviously the stick hadn't impacted its ability
to hunt (hey, if football players can play with EARRINGS, why can't
Coop's hunt with a little decor?)

Removal of the stick onsite was impossible, and with the nearest rehab
center an hour's hike + three hour drive away and the bird healthy,
we figured release was the proper action. We did use one of those little
saws you find on swiss army knives to saw off the stick (which ran
in a dorsal-ventral direction, vs. side-to-side) as close as possible to
its back and belly.

One tough bird!




-Don Baccus-