Hi Rob and everyone,



I have an adult Sharp-shinned Hawk that I see periodically hunting around our neighborhood (and in our yard around?the feeders).? This bird uses exactly the same technique as you describe, sometimes alternating it with a single pass and landing in one of the?several fir trees in our back yard and staying still - apparently waiting for activity to happen again.? The 'double-pass' approach is used in conjunction with structures and the terrain around our house.? Specifically, the bird usually comes in between our house and our neighbor's house and then makes a sharp left turn near one set of feeders and across our back yard.? Or, coming from the other direction, the bird will hug the ground (maybe 3 to 4 feet off the deck) in our other neighbor's yard, which is about six feet higher than ours - this puts the bird below and behind our neighbor's hedge and not visible from our yard (we've seen it from our second floor bedroom).? The accipiter then flies over the neighbor's hedge and drops into our yard and makes a quick pass, either going between the houses as in its other route, or past our neighbor's house only to return again shortly.? The Sharpie is no higher than six to eight feet off the deck at the maximum during these passes.?



The hawk seems very healthy, but as usual with accipiters, its success rate - despite the fancy flying - isn't particularly high based on my handful of observations.? If I remember correctly from classes and reading, accipiters typically have something like a 15% success rate on their hunting forays.? I would guess 'our' Sharpie is higher than this because I have seen a couple of successful hunts and the bird certainly is an adept flyer.? As to how sophisticated the?prey yard birds are in their cooperative warning system, I can't say except that we still have a very large and active population of the usual suspects despite the accipiter predations.



John Tubbs

Snoqualmie, WA

johntubbs at comcast.net

?


-- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Sandelin" <nwnature at verizon.net>
To: "TWEETERS" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 5:02:16 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [Tweeters] A chickadee teaches me something new about hawks

I had a couple hours to kill in Bellevue yesterday so I wandered over to the
Bellevue Botanical garden. I sat and watched a chickadee working on a nest
hole, carrying beakfuls of chips 15 feet away to leave no trace of its
excavation. ?A robin did its alarm call and the chickadee froze on the side
of the dead tree and moments later a Coopers hawk zoomed past. Within
seconds the hawk was out of view but the chickadee stayed completely still.
After about a minute and a half the hawk returned, zooming back the other
direction and covering much of the same ground again, passing the still
frozen chickadee. After this pass the chickadee went back to work only a few
seconds after the hawk passed out of view, and the bird of prey did not
reappear. So it seemed to me that the chickadee expected the hawk to double
back and stayed still until it did. ?

Today in my own yard, I saw the same return route flight behavior of a
Coopers Hawk as it passed by my bird feeder. It passed the feeder, zoomed
out of view, then returned about 2 minutes later for a second pass going the
other direction. I did not know this was a hunting technique of Coopers
hawks, thanks to the Chickadee for bringing it to my awareness. I wonder if
hawks do this in places where they expect to find prey, such a ?feeder or a
brushy clearing? And I wonder how many prey birds are hip to this trick and
if so, how they learn it?

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
Snohomish County WA


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