Hungry Cooper's Hawk

 I have a sometimes filled bird feeder in the backyard.  It's more to entertain my cats than anything else.  They watch it from the cat yard like cat TV.

It is no longer highly frequented, likely due to my failures to put seed in it.   The birds who have come to it are primarily chickadees, English Sparrows and finches.  Also there are resident scrub jays, sometimes engaging in family feuds, living in the big fir tree just across the fence in the neighbors yard behind me.

They are too big to get feeder food from the feeder.  But they they scavenge the seeds the other birds flick off (don't like).   The cheaper seed bag mixes have a lot of seeds disliked by the finches and sparrows, like millet.  

Out front I have a forsythia bush.  Sometimes small birds in flocks race through the area and stop, maybe for a rest, in the safety of the dense forsythia.   

This afternoon, I was in my chair, and saw movement out front.  To my astonishment a small hawk was trying to perch on a plant holder, that no longer holds a plant, that stands about four feet tall beside the forsythia.  It was unable to gain purchase on the curved thin metal of the plant holder, however, and dove suddenly into the forsythia.   

The small birds inside scattered out every direction.  I thought the hawk was gone.  I went out and looked into the bush and the hawk flew out the other side.   I thought the sight of my face so close would scare it off good, but the hawk only flew to the apple tree, where I snapped its photo.

Cooper's Hawk, intent on small bird dinner in my yard

From the apple tree, it flew behind the forsythia and to my neighbors roof, where it eyed me.  Then without warning it dove down straight for the forsythia again, then dodged when it saw I was still there, and headed over the roof to the backyard, where it is much more likely to hunt small birds with success.

Its not like I don't know this hawk.   I was sitting in my car once this summer and it dove down in the foot wide space between the side of my car and the fence after a fat mourning dove, who somehow escaped.  The mourning doves have heavy bodies and get airborn slowly, must make inviting prey.

If you have a bird feeder, the hawks know your yard.   They know who eats where and where its easier to catch dinner.

But I've never seen a hawk dive into a bush after small birds.  I thought maybe it had been successful and there was an injured or dead little bird in the forsythia that the hawk wanted back, but I looked again and saw nothing.

I know the little birds have been eating on the apples in the tree too and I suspect the hawk got one there the other day.

I've had hawks in my yard over the years many times.

Usually they are Cooper's Hawks.  This may have been a sharp shinned hawk, with those red eyes, not sure.

This one is a Coopers' Hawk, pretty sure.

I'll never forget this bird showing up, making a huge racket, living in my yard off and on, had no idea where it came from.  I was about to drop trap it and get it out to a lady who said she'd take it, when it vanished.

Guinea Fowl

I returned the 15 FCCO traps this morning and the cage covers I'd borrowed from them.   I also delivered three of the Lebanon colony cats to Silverton Cat Rescue Barn Team and the threesome got a great home.  Family with kids who love animals.  Always good to hear.

Here are Booboo, Dodger and Glitterbug just before I loaded them up and drove them to Salem.

Glitterbug's the girl.  They're all three young and you know how the young adapt so much faster than us oldies.

It's been raining and will continue a few more days.  I'm trying to recover from all the work.  Yesterday was pretty much just plain work, at cleaning traps, after returning all the cats to the colony who had overnighted here, setting up the five going to barn homes in two cages, doing laundry, catching up on chores for my own cats.  Now and then--collapse from being so tired.

Tomorrow the other pair, both calicos, go to their barn home but I only have to meet SCR here in town, to transfer.  Two more kittens from my bathroom went to Keithas Kitties yesterday too.  Still three in there.

This afternoon was for relaxing and that's when I saw the hawk drama out front.