During lunch time yesterday, I walked down Seneca, next to the part of
Freeway Park that is immediately east of Park Place, on my way back to work.
The clamor of gull screeches and crow caws alerted me, and I scanned the sky
for peregrines. Nothing. A few crows in the trees continued to squawk. It
was a mystery until a crow dove past something in a deciduous tree, and I
saw flapping and struggling. To my delight, an adult female Cooper's Hawk
mantled a pigeon that dangled from one foot. When the crows lost interest
in her, she calmed down and focused on the pigeon. She was trying to pull
it up onto the horizontal branch she stood on, but she had moved near the
apex of a fork in the limb, and the pigeon kept getting wedged in the fork.
She wrestled with that situation for a few minutes, alternately tugging on
the pigeon and looking around. Eventually she moved far enough out on the
limb that she was able to pull the pigeon up on the branch and flip it over
on its back. She began plucking and eating her lunch, looking around
between bites. I was probably only 30 - 35 feet from her, but she seemed
oblvious to my presence. I had my pocket binos, so I had a great view.
The upper surface of her tail, wings and her back had a strong brownish
cast, and her underparts were heavily barred with rufous. Her head, neck,
and the tip of her tail looked very wet. I read an interesting article
about eye color changes in accipiters recently, so I checked her eye color
carefully; it was still yellow.
After a few minutes of lunch, she became very nervous, repeatedly looking
up. Whatever she saw, I didn't see it. Carrying the pigeon, she flew to
another tree about 100 feet away and perched out in the open. Three ladies
in long skirts with colorful umbrellas walked beneath her, but she stayed put.
At that point I realized that I was very late returning to work, and I'd not
yet had *my* lunch (no pigeon on my menu). I left her.
After walking through Freeway Park regularly and seeing nothing more exotic
than a Ruby-crowned Kinglet - what a treat!

Ruth Taylor
Seattle
rutht at seanet.com