Tweets,

Given Dennis "Many-Hawks" Paulson's observations of his Seattle yard's
hawk activity, I thought my Seattle weekend hawk sightings would be worth
noting. From them, and observations such as Many-Hawk's, I'm inclined to
believe that some of the better hawk-watching can be found near feeders.

Sunday, about 1 mile west of Seward Park (of course I found no hawks
there) the crows alerted me to an immature Cooper's hawk in a driveway
tree. This was about 8:30 am.

Soon after arriving home, about noon, I noticed that my bird-feeder was
not yet empty; this is unusual in that it only takes a couple of hours of
daylight for the house species (i.e. house finch and house sparrow) to
finish it off. I then saw a sharp-shinned fly over and into some nearby
trees. After much scolding by Steller's jays (which also shook out a couple
of varied thrushs), both the jays and I got tired of trying to find the
well hidden hawk; I turned to lunch and they to scolding the neighbor's
cat ;-)

Another 30 minutes later an adult red-tailed hawk leisurely soared on a
thermal above north-east Queen Anne, and then the sharp-shinned joined it.

And then, about 5pm two sharp-shinned hawks terrorized the local
passerines with their dashing about from yard to yard.

It will be interesting to compare the timing of increased hawk activity in
the settled areas, with Don Baccus' from the Goshutes...


Michael Patrick
mpatrick at eldec.com
(206)743-8204