While doing yard work late this afternoon, the blue jays at my feeder went berserk. I assumed that a hawk had made a run and as I crept around the corner of the house, sure enough a Sharp-shinned Hawk was sitting on my fence. I watched it for a few seconds and it suddenly jumped headfirst into a bush packed with sparrows. All the White-throated Sparrows seemed to know that strength in numbers is important, so they all left the bush at the same time. The hawk remained in the bush, waiting for the lone bird left, a House Sparrow, to make its move. The sparrow made a run for it and didn’t make it 10 feet before the hawk deftly picked it out of mid-air. The hawk immediately went to the ground, landing literally only 4 feet from where I was standing!! I froze like a statue (much the way I do in the house when my wife is calling me to do something). The hawk was oblivious to my presence. Here is the interesting behavior. As the hawk stood on top of the still-alive sparrow, it repeatedly opened its mouth very wide. Eventually, it violently ejected some kind of black object from its mouth. Then it went to work plucking the sparrow’s feathers. I noted where the object landed and retrieved the gooey prize after the hawk decided to take the sparrow into a nearby tree for better plucking. I took the object to my patio table and disassembled it with my knife. It was mostly feathers but I found a tiny beak and several very small bones. So, the hawk had recently eaten either a small passerine or a White Castle hamburger. I did not know that hawks coughed up pellets. Anyway, I thought this would make for interesting reading as you are preparing your Sunday dinner.
PS: I can’t imagine anybody is interested but I took a few pictures of the pellet before and after pulling it apart. I’ll be happy to send them along. Cheers!! Glenn Quinn Hauppauge, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
