New Year's Greetings! Similar to Nancy Cusumano's report, a Coopers Hawk(s) has also been stalking my feeder birds on and off lately. I live across from the CU agriculture fields on Hanshaw Road with the greater Sapsucker Woods—"Briarwood" and the Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary— behind our house. Excellent mixed-hawk habitat.
I've seen a Coopers Hawk swoop by our feeder area between 1-2:30 pm this past Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. We've had mild "lake-effect" snow for over a week, and the hawk only visits during the brief periods of calm. It's effective at instantly scaring the large flock of finches and other resident cardinals, chickadees, juncos, jays, etc., but I don't think it's caught anything. Also on Sunday afternoon, a Red-tailed Hawk was prancing around the deep snow, hunting rodents in the backyard feeder area. It appeared that the hawk could hear the creatures scurrying beneath the snow's surface but it could not get a talon on one. These sightings made me wonder how successful Coopers and Red-tails are at winter hunting? What is their attack success rate (effort:kill ratios)? I found a 2003 article entitled *HUNTING BEHAVIOR AND DIET OF COOPER'S HAWKS: AN URBAN VIEW OF THE SMALL-BIRD-IN-WINTER PARADIG* by Timothy C. Roth II and Steven L. Lima. The Condor 105(3):474-483. 2003. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1650/7219?cookieSet=1&prevSearch=&journalCode=cond Of the eight Cooper's Hawks (7 female, 1 male) radio-tracked during the winters of 1999–2001, Roth and Lima observed 179 attacks, 35 of which were successful, for an overall attack success rate of 20%. What's the rate in other COHA populations? In Red-tails? Other hawks? I've got to run but I'll search Google and the BNA later. Does anyone know of relevant studies? I haven't examined this topic before. Best of Birding in 2010! Candace PS The 2010 Hooters Calendar is available at http://www.capitalstool.com/forums/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=120608 . -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
