Hawk-sighting good for me, bad for small birds

The weather has been brutal. I’m reading of record snowfalls and I’m thinking I have it pretty rough, having to walk through and drive in this stuff. But I don’t live out in it. Out there is where life has really gotten tough.

I know that, in part, because of the ravens that have recently moved into the neighborhood. Usually a species of the mountains or the Rathdrum Prairie, I seldom see one in the city. I now have at least three sharing the block with my usual large flock of crows.

Yesterday my car got stuck in the ice of my back alley. The garbage collectors have declared the alley too dangerous for their monster green trucks and they have instructed us to move our trash to the street in front of the house. They did not specify on which side of the 4 1/2-foot-high snow berm left by the plows that covers the sidewalk and takes up a quarter of the width of the street the cans should go on. Neither did they suggest how we should get the cans through the 2 and 3 feet of snow that covers the yard between the alley and the berm.

As I contemplated these harsh conditions of life and wondered at the uselessness of my four-wheel drive on ice, I realized that I was being watched by a flock of 70 or so bohemian waxwings. Their softly whistled calls seemed to mock my situation, and with binoculars I could see that every head was turned in my direction. In retrospect, I think they were just giving advice. Waxwings are too nice to taunt. Their winter isn’t so tough. The neighborhood is full of berry-laden mountain ash trees and these guys obviously had time on their wings.

I have a bird feeder in a maple in my front yard, but without much cover in the yard, I don’t get many avian takers. I had five house sparrows that regularly flew from two houses down to briefly scarf some seed and then hightail it back to the neighbor’s bushes. I got a used Christmas tree a few weeks ago and wired it to my porch so they could live closer. They seemed to appreciate the gesture, but recently I noticed their number had dwindled to two.

Then a week or so ago I was standing on my front porch waiting for my dog, who has 18 inch legs, to figure out how to poop in 36 inches of fresh snow. A sharp-shinned hawk suddenly alighted midlevel in the large maple next door. That was pretty cool, but then an unsuspecting starling landed in the top of the tree. The hawk, a strict small-bird predator, flipped up, nabbed the relatively large starling, and plummeted, the starling screaming some awful bird death scream, to the ground where the sound abruptly ceased.

I then realized where my three missing house sparrows had gone. Sharp-shinned hawks often stake out a feeder – it’s like birdie smorgasbord. I don’t usually take sides in predator-prey relationships – a friend regularly intervenes on behalf of Steller’s jays in her yard – but I found it hard to lament the loss of either house sparrow or starling, and hawks are really neat to see.

Today I was watching two ravens knocking snow from the boughs of the two largest conifers in the area, about two blocks away. They appeared to be making a game of it. Then the sharp-shinned flew in and landed in the top of the tallest tree. That seemed strange to me – sharp-shinned are not generally obvious about perching – and it really aggravated the ravens. They made numerous swoops on the hawk, but it ignored them and they finally left. It was rather like the interaction between a parent and two teenagers.

As I stood, marveling at my good fortune in seeing the encounter, the hawk, two blocks away, jumped from its perch, leveled its wings – never flapping along the way – and shot straight for my feeder. It was a long distance and a good drop so that bird was moving when it reached my yard.

Sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper’s hawks, the two look-alike accipiters one might see in the city, are beautiful up close. When perched they show relatively long, unfeathered yellow legs supported by large, yellow, heavily clawed feet. When flying, they keep legs and feet tucked up as with landing gear on an airplane. They have a long, banded tail, but most striking of all, they have a richly striped orange chest and abdomen and a bright white rearend. Seldom does one get to see these characteristics up close.

In a flash, I saw a view usually reserved for soon-to-be-dead little birds. My position from inside the house was just a few feet to one side of the hawk’s target and the feeder is at eye level when I stand. First I saw a brown streak with wings set for rapid glide, then, 20 feet from target, as if looking down the barrel of a gun, I saw orange striping, a flash of white, but mostly, as the hawk flared, I saw fully extended legs and toes as the sharp-shinned came in, bright yellow feet-first.

Impact occurred on the opposite side of the tree trunk and the hawk simply dematerialized, but two house sparrows sped away, so I’m guessing it was a miss. I found no feathers or carcasses in the snow. Life is brutal out there.