I had a fantastic hawk encounter last evening. I was sitting in our back yard outside of Puyallup doing some work at our picnic table. I looked up just as something caught my eye, what appeared to be a juvenile Sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk dove into our plum tree where at least a dozen birds were hanging out (House Finches and Sparrows I believe, given I've seen them previous nights in the tree but they flew out so fast I couldn't tell). It was strange because I didn't even know there were that many birds in there, roosting perhaps?. The hawk lingered in the tree for a few seconds, long enough that I thought he wasn't in there any longer and had flown out in the flash of birds, feathers and leaves. As I approached the tree he flew out and over to a neighbors fence. He had not caught a bird.

I never got a good look in the dusk light to distinguish between Cooper's or Sharp-shinned but it still had juvenile looking feathers. By the time I got my binoculars out it had flown to a further fence and was too far away to really distinguish anything meaningful. I am leaning towards Sharp-shinned given their propensity for smaller birds. I have never heard of hawks diving into trees in hope of catching a bird. I don't think it was chasing a bird into the tree, but may have been. There was just a loud crash into the tree followed by the exodus of many birds.

Anyone heard of such a thing as this?

What a sight!

TedR
Fredrickson, WA
coffeemonkey101 at comcast.net