Eating away the winter blahs

Winter is a tough time for many forms of wildlife. Mule deer, for example, must dig out their winter fare of bitterbrush buried in snow. They also have to find thermal cover every night to ward off those night-time temperatures that can plummet to way below zero.

On the other hand, there is a group of birds that have it made: the accipiters, otherwise known as "bird hawks." Like most birds in our latitudes, their downy underwear keeps them warm, and their winter food, small birds flocking together in winter for protection, food and warmth, are a dependable food supply.

John Christen, who sent me the accompanying photo of the "sharpie," e-mailed me earlier with a typical story about the hunting behavior of this smallest of the accipiters in winter. Most of the hawks have a pattern, which leads me to believe that old evolution is always underway as far as accipiters are concerned. I believe they've begun using windows to help them secure prey in the winter.

From what I have witnessed at my own feeder in winter, it goes something like this: A flock of finches, house sparrows, quail, grosbeaks, pine siskins or whatever come to the feeder for the much-needed handout this human has supplied. About 100 yards away a hungry sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk is perched unnoticed in a bushy pine, juniper or sagebrush, waiting.

The hawk patiently watches the flock of birds settle down and begin eating, then (I think) it picks out the one it wants (how they do that is way beyond my comprehension). The main idea is to catch and eat the easiest prey, that way minimum energy is expended to catch food that provides more energy to enable the hawk to make it through the winter to reproduce its kind, etc., etc.

Once the prey is selected, the hawk pushes off with those powerful, short wings and heads right for the feeder. The profile of a bird hawk coming at you is almost unnoticeable at a distance, but birds are always watching for the inevitability predator.

Before the hawk gets into striking range one bird will see it coming - and as it is with group behavior, when one bird leaps off the feeder, they all do. At that moment the hawk, with just a twitch of its tail, aims right at the bird it wants. That bird panics and goes for the first way out to get away from the now very threatening hawk - and that's usually a window.

If the hawk is experienced, and has pulled this off a few times previously, it will slow down and give the prey the opportunity to strike the window. Whack! The prey is usually knocked silly and falls to the ground. Blam! The hawk is on it, and within seconds it is flying off to a convenient perch to pluck and eat the still-warm victim.

Sometimes, if the hawk is careless (usually an immature with little experience) it will try to go after the prey through the window. For the prey it's usually fatal, but sometimes the hawk is spared, and that's when Gary Landers, our local raptor rehabber at "Wild Wings" enters the picture.

The sharpie that uses the birds that come to my feeder for its winter food has the routine down pat. It actually zooms up and away when the bird hits the window and then comes back like an F-16 on military power and oftentimes snatches it before it hits the ground.

When I asked John Christen what he thought the prey bird was in his photo, he said, "I believe the dove was a mourning. The dove flew into a large upper window in our great room, it may have been chased by the hawk. Shortly thereafter I saw the hawk on the dove. I took the photos out of our back window as the hawk was having its meal. This was on Sunday afternoon December 15, 2009 around 2 p.m."

Please don't hate hawks because they are getting your birds. There is no "good" or "bad," or "right" or "wrong" in nature, it just "is."