We were having our usual late-summer Sunday morning breakfast on the back
porch while being serenaded by our ubiquitous Steller's Jays melodious song.
We have two gangs of Steller's Jay in our back yard, the south side gang
which is headed by Don Vito Corleone, and the east side gang headed by Weird
Owl Yankovic. Generally the two jay gangs share the peanuts we offer them
in harmony with a minimum of fighting and theft of each other's peanuts;
this morning was different.



As Don Vito was cracking open a peanut about 5' away from us in the
grapevine trellised under our back porch canopy, we were joined by a
juvenile Coopers Hawk who landed about 10' away from us in the Lilac Tree
(his yellow eyes gave him away as a juvenile). Mr. Coopers quickly gave
chase as Don Vito fled into the Cherry tree at the edge of our backyard
sanctuary. Fortunately for Don Vito, this goombah hawk was inexperienced in
making hits; I am pretty sure that Don Vito made his escape judging by the
amount of indignant Steller's Jay squawking and Eastern Gray Squirrel
barking.



The Coopers then flew to fence and perched there for a while, checking out
our other backyard feeders, until he figured out he was too slow on the
takeoff from that position to even chase down a Band-tailed Pigeon. Of
course no other birds would come in to the feeder with him sitting in such
an obvious position.



He seems to be a fast learner though and I saw him several times today
checking our back yard out for late lunch from high perches in the trees. I
expect to see little piles of jay and Band-tailed Pigeon feathers soon in
our backyard. Our wildlife sanctuary functions on many levels and we
thrilled to have this Accipiter as another backyard bird.