Dennis and All,
For three years I was blessed with a front row seat as a pair of Cooper's Hawks nested in Wallace Swamp Creek Park. This year I don't know where their nest is, although I do see them from time to time.
My story will only provide circumstantial evidence that Cooper's eat rats, because I never actually saw one eaten. It was quite comical to watch as the young hawks practiced their hunting skills. I frequently found them perched over the paved trail that runs through the park waiting for a rat to cross to the other side. Timing is everything when you are hunting and these youngsters didn't have it down quite right. A rat would run across the trail, jr. would launch out after it, landing clumsily in the middle of the trail. By then the rat was well out of harms way, the poor hawklets didn't know quite what to do. they would just stand there with an odd look on their face as if to say, "UH, which way did he go? which way did he go?" in a second or two one of the parents who had been watching the whole thing from afar would give a call and the youngster would join them high in the fir trees.
On another occasion I was walking through the woods on a winter day and heard something crashing through the undergrowth. pointing my binoculars that way I saw a Coop jumping from branch to branch and diving down to the ground every once in a while. It eventually came up with some kind of prey although it flew away from me so I couldn't see what it had. I suspect it was a rat because any birds in the area would have been out of there when they heard the thrashing noise this hawk was making.
Linda Phillips
linda underscore phillips 1252 AT MSN dot com
Kenmore 98028-2616