This hawk needs a shrink!

Cooper's Hawk at Jones Beach -- 3/05
Photo by Lloyd Spitalnik http://www.lloydspitalnikphotos.com

In a message dated 10/9/2006 Bill Trankle of Indianapolis writes:

Marie, I have another question for our Ohioan hawk expert, Mr. Blakeman.

As you know I have a Cooper's hawk who regularly visits my feeders, but yesterday I saw a display that amazed me. While staring dejectedly out at my birdless yard, the Cooper's came flying in slowly and then tried to snag a good-sized fox squirrel off of the trunk of my yard's hackberry tree! Not only did he miss, but he proceeded to chase the squirrel around the trunk, flapping mightily to keep his altitude, until he'd done the entire circumference.

The squirrel didn't even look worried as it perched on a knot while the Cooper's landed on the crossbar of my feeder complex. He stood there for a few minutes eyeing the squirrel, and then he tried again! He even chased it higher into the tree until a second squirrel showed up and proceeded to chase the first one, completely unmindful of the hawk. Finally, the Cooper's flew off into the field behind my house.

What I'm wondering if John can address is whether this is common, or was that one desperately hungry hawk? I was actually hoping he'd miss the squirrel, because I'm not sure he could have subdued it had he nabbed it, and it might have done the hawk grievous harm.

Never a dull moment in my back yard!

Bill Trankle

I sent the question on to John Blakeman. He immediately responded:

Bill and Marie,

The mind of the Cooper's hawk is inscrutably insane. Coop's seldom do anything rational or with deliberate consideration. I'm certain that the hawk was not deliberately trying to capture the squirrel, which was one our giant Midwestern fox squirrels, not the rather smaller gray squirrels of Central Park in NYC.

My giant red-tails have a tough enough time dispatching a fox squirrel, compared to a Cooper's hawk with it's relatively tiny, bird-catching feet. The squirrel instinctively "knew" that the accipiter was not going to really try to grab onto it. One bite of the squirrel could have severed the hawk's leg. The Cooper's relatively weak legs simply can't puncture the squirrel's very tough skin, and the small hawk can't kill the squirrel by suffocation.

The squirrel had the good sense to know that the hawk wasn't going to latch on to the squirrel, so the tree rodent just sat there or conveniently scurried to another part of the tree without any perceived threat. The second squirrel joined in the encounter with the same perspective.

Of course, what was the hawk doing in its initial pursuit?

Because this is an accipiter, particularly a quasi-psychotic Cooper's hawk, there may be no rational explanation. I'm guessing that the frenetic hawk was an immature, lacking starkly red eyes and blue-gray overall feather cast. It was probably a bird of the year, with yellow eyes and brownish-gray overall body hue.

The bird's flight against the fox squirrel was probably a momentary behavioral diversion, an incidental flight against something moving or alive, albeit inappropriate. Cooper's hawks can't sit or contemplate for longer than 20 seconds or so. They are constantly on the move searching for small birds to attack. In this case, the hawk had scared off all the birds, and many have already departed toward Kentucky and parts south. The hawk was impetuously impatient, so it impulsively shot after the squirrel, the only living, moving thing that it could see for the nonce.

Again, Cooper's hawks are weird and irrational, always approaching the edge of their safety or physiological limits. Against small birds, they are superb. Against mammals, particularly anything larger than a chipmunk, they are unequipped.

--John Blakeman