Maurie,

One possibility is that the Coopers scored a kill and that attracted the Roughie. He may have been debating whether it was worth it to try to challenge the smaller hawk for the prize. Raptors seem to be aware that an injury can spell death for them, so maybe he was weighing his options. I doubt very much that they were cooperating

-Rolan

Mark & Maurie Kirschner <mnmkirschner at gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Tweets,

Yesterday, the 18th, a friend and I were walking out at the Nisqually Delta enjoying the beautiful weather and all our feathered friends when we came across something that left us scratching our heads.
We had commented several times the oddity of not seeing any birds of pray, so when we were heading back towards the visitor center from McAllister Creek we were happily surprised to see a hawk perched on the ground maybe 12 feet in front of us, on the very edge of the rock path. It was facing west as if admiring the view. This seemed a very strange behavior but we didn't mind getting really good views of this bird, which was a Rough-legged Hawk. That in itself is a nice treat, especially at the delta. But it's behaviour was really puzzling us. We then saw movement a few feet away to the east of this bird where another bird of pray was having an early dinner of coot breast. This hawk did not look anything like a rough-legged and indeed looked identical to a Cooper's Hawk. The behaviour seemed like that of a pair of birds who might take turns eating, while the other stands watch. But these were too different species all together. So, not knowing a lot about this
kind of behaviour I am curious if anyone could shed some light on this. Has anyone else ever seen a larger hawk, sit patiently with it's back to a smaller hawk having dinner? There were some people that came up behind us and we finally let them pass, it took them getting very close to the birds before the rough-wing took flight, and then finally the Cooper's took off as well.

Maurie Kirschner
Olympia, WA
mnmkirschner at gmail.com

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Rolan Nelson
Lakewood, WA
rnbuffle at yahoo.com

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