December 15, 1988 - Hawks Provide Hints on Nature's Pecking OrderHawks Provide Hints on Nature's Pecking Order
By Paul Stoutenburgh
Everyone knows what a hawk is. It has
sharp talons and a hooked beak, flies fast and
catches other birds or animals. Hawks can
be big or small. The one most people think
of is our national emblem, the eagle. Past
that I'm afraid most memories become sort
of blurred with only an occasional "I think
I saw a hawk today."
The truth of the matter is it's pretty hard
to go through a day, if you are really looking
for hawks, without seeing at least one. The
view from our picture window looks across
our pasture with a large overgrown field in
the background. It's here we can usually see
a red - tailed hawk soaring on its endless hunt-
ing flights. This is a large hawk with broad
flapping wings that circles high above. If you
look carefully, the characteristic rusty -red
tail can be seen when it banks and turns.
On my drive to the post office there's us-
ually a chance to see a kestrel perched along
the telephone wires. booking closely at this
little hawk, no larger than a robin, you can
usually see the head arched so it can better
see below where it is looking for a meal of
a mouse or shrew. Both these hawks live and
nest in our area. The kestrel, once called the
sparrow hawk, lives in cavities in trees and
in buildings while the red -tail usually builds
its big stick nest high in an oak or other de-
ciduous tree.
Yesterday I had the thrill of seeing a more
secretive and often overlooked hawk, one of
the woodland hawks, a sharp - shinned. I was
casually looking out our big window when
from nowhere, it seemed, darted this small
hawk. It swooped over the pasture fence and
lit on the bottom rail just as a cardinal dove
into a rosebush nearby. This was that won-
derful old- fashioned rose we often see in
people's yards. I slipped mine from my
mother -in -law's parent plant. It's usually
loaded with clusters of small pink roses. To-
day only a few withered and frost -burned
flowers remained, but its thick, thorny cover
was what saved Mrs. Cardinal from becom-
ing a meal for Mr. Hawk. Frustrated by the
cardinal's dive into the rosebush, the hawk
paced up and down on the fence rail. There
was a meal in there and he couldn't get to it.
Many dislike hawks because of this killing
attitude, particularly when they snatch one
of their favorite songbirds, but we must re-
member most attempts by hawks are fai-
lures and even if the assault is successful,
that usually signals that the bird or animal
was sick, old or genetically unequipped for
the natural world. This theory has been
proved time and time again in all sorts of pre-
dator studies. The wolf in pursuit of the
moose takes only the old and sickly, for a
healthy moose can fend off wolves with no
difficulty. Or the osprey might pick up a
flounder in one of our creeks or bays because
it probably did not camouflage itself cor-
rectly.
I could imagine the terror that little car-
dinal went through as the sharpie moved up
and down, poking his head in here and there,
those glaring eyes searching through the
thicket. These fear tactics went on for two or
three minutes until the cardinal could stand
it no longer and dashed out the other side. By
the time the hawk realized what had hap-
pened it was too late. The cardinal had es-
caped and the hawk flew away in pursuit of
something less resourceful. It rose up over
the field where there were no rose bushes or
clever cardinals.
In early December, while working out in
the garden harvesting the last of my chard
and pulling the last of my carrots, I noticed
a little bird flitting back and forth between
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the pasture fence and the now - shriveled rasp-
berries. It was catching insects on the wing
so it had to be some sort of flycatcher but this
was very late, for most insects have long
stopped flying since winter's cold has taken
over.
That day, though, had been a warm one—
up to 60 degrees. Even my bees were out do-
ing their last- minute shopping and house-
cleaning so I guess other insects, once dor-
mant, were also up and about. I watched in-
tently, hoping to get some clue as to what
kind of flycatcher was so foolish to stay this
late. After all we've had some good freezes
and the prediction of the jet stream howling
out of the north dropping the temperatures
didn't paint a very rosy picture for any kind
of bird, least of all a flycatcher who must
havge flying insects to survive.
On close examination I couldn't find any
wing bars or eye ring that would have made
it a wood pewee or a least flycatcher. There-
fore, it had to be a phoebe. No wing bars (or
dull ones), no eye -ring, and small. Every-
thing matched but the tail. There was none.
What had happened? Had a cat grabbed for
it and wound up with a claw full of feathers
or was it that sharp - shinned hawk that again
almost but not quite caught it for its noon-
day meal. I'll never know.
All about us are these everyday crises that
occur time after time in the natural world.
Occasionally we are privileged to peek into
these adventures and get a glimpse of how
the system works.
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