FOGHORN LEGHORN~ "Lookit here son, I say, I say son, did ya see that hawk after those hens? ....

[CaCO3]

No, it's not a general term...google Cooper's Hawk

Duh.... Usually, I make much more of an effort to research these kinds of things. Got lazy. Well that's good to know. Also found out that these are present in CT, but are threatened and all sightings should be reported. Even have their own fact sheet on the CT DEEP website. http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?A=2723&Q=325986

I hope to sight them, but not in my yard.

 

[Cynthia12]

Duh.... Usually, I make much more of an effort to research these kinds of things. Got lazy. Well that's good to know. Also found out that these are present in CT, but are threatened and all sightings should be reported. Even have their own fact sheet on the CT DEEP website. http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?A=2723&Q=325986

I hope to sight them, but not in my yard.

I sight them! I see them in my neighbors tree just staring over at my pen. At least I did through the winter. Now I haven't seen the guy since. Hoping it decided to leave the neighborhood.
I have a neighbor that lost a chicken to one last year. We live in a neighborhood like I said. She went out, found a chicken with it's head and neck eaten..gone! She calls me, asks what would do that. Didn't think of a hawk doing that. I said, a cat? I had a cat get one of mine and did just that first off. But, later, here comes this hawk, just flying around the yard and landing on her coop, the neighbors roof, the fence. She had put the chicken in a box, with it's feet sticking out...that hawk could see that. Finally, her and her daughter went out to bury their chicken..which are more pets to them than anything else. When they got that chicken out of that box, that hawk took a dive right at them, and yep, about 2 ft. above their heads. They couldn't believe it. He really wanted that chicken ~ it was his! Left once the bird was buried.
I've had one fly right over my coop and my head, just as I came out of the coop. Didn't get a close look as to what kind though on that day.
I've had a neighbor ask, did you hear your chickens this morning? They were going crazy, so I looked over the fence, and there was this hawk stuck in the chicken wire on top of your run. It's wing span was huge! I thought hawks could see better than that. Sounds like it took a dive for my chickens and got a surprise. I do let my girls out though. These incidents have been far enough apart, I haven't worried too much. Last year, if I saw a hawk in the neighbors tree, I would just leave the girls in the run, or if they were out, put them back in. Crossing fingers, so far so good.

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Cooper's hawks are definitely a specific species, Accipiter cooperii. There is also a size and aggression difference between the western and eastern US subspecies (eastern Coop's are bigger and more aggressive, western are smaller and flee more from humans than the eastern birds), and females are considerably bigger than the males (most raptors are reversely sexually dimorphic, which means that girls are bigger than boys, and the accipiters - the short winged, fast moving, long-tailed forest hawks - are profoundly sexually dimorphic). As a random aside, an eastern female Coop's can be twice the size of a female western Coop's, and they can weigh anywhere from 3/4 of a pound to under 2 pounds.

It's funny that you mention that story Cynthia about the hawk refusing to leave its kill; that instinct actually utilized by raptor trappers to capture birds that are 'trap-shy' to the regular traps. Let it kill, bump it off, and wait for it to return and capture it that way. Raptors have a VERY strong instinct to always return to a kill site if their kill is not removed entirely by whatever bumped them off in the first place.

As far as the birds that I currently have, right now I have a male Harris Hawk and a female red-tailed hawk. I've flown and hunted with American Kestrels, Harris' Hawks, Peregrine Falcons, Prairie Falcons, Cooper's Hawks, and a metric ton of Red-tailed hawks.

I trap them as juvenile birds in their first year, hunt with them for a few years after and then return them to the wild. They are typically VERY fast learners, and can go from buck-wild and never having been touched by the hand of man to free-flying to you in a few short weeks, all by just offering them food and gentle handling. The fastest from trap-to-field that I've personally experienced was a juvenile female red-tail of mine who was free-flying to me in under 7 days out of the wild, but I've heard stories of birds 4 days out of the wild free-flying to their new falconers. As you can see from these accounts, food means a LOT to raptors and can easily override the some of the very deepest primal instincts, such as fear and 'fight or flight'.

PS: Raptors can live 20-35 years (I've personally seen a 30 year old red-tail), however they have a 60-85% mortality rate in their first year due to injury, disease, predation, starvation, electrocution, shootings, and accidents, which is why falconers are legally permitted to take the first year birds since the impact is biologically negligible (and it is a bonus to the wild breeding populations when an adult bird is released back into the wild in good condition). Adult birds are not trapped for falconry purposes, in part because they are 'set in their ways' and resist captivity and training, but also in part that it is potentially removing a bird from the breeding population.

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Reading back through some of the posts since my first one, I noticed a lot of people talking about wild hawks flying in close to you. Bold/confident birds and (especially) inexperienced juveniles who are wild and untrained will definitely just fly right over or around people when food is involved.

For one that's been trained for free-flight (PS: We never train them to hunt, they already know how to do that... we just train them to come back to us when we toss them up!

), they REALLY lose all inhibition about flying close to people, and will land on you (your head, your shoulder, your brush beating stick, your hat, your hawking bag, etc) if you are not prepared with your gloved fist out (Note: Hawks know well the difference between delivering a 'crunching' death grip grab - called a 'footing' in the falconry terminology - and a gentle landing, so while it is sharp-and-scratchy when they land uninvited on you, it is not a painful bleedy-and-puncture-y type of event.) Sometimes they will land on the ground and walk to you if they are feeling goofy, bored or just wanted to come in for a closer look at something interesting on the ground.

I'll share a cute story with you all from several years ago; I was out with my two-year old (an adult plumaged bird, with a bright red tail) male redtail hunting rabbits in the heat of August. We weren't getting too much up other than biting gnats and yellow jackets, so we headed deeper into a cool grove of white oak trees. I heard my bird's bells (they wear bells on their legs so we can locate them in deep brush/treetops) jingle as he shifted positions in the tree, so I looked up and saw him soaring close to the treetops, but soaring away from me!

I ran out into a clearing, swinging my leather lure (which is garnished with a piece of meat) and calling him, suddenly the hawk banks and starts coming in fast. Then, about 10 feet above my head, the hawk stalled out, hovered - just then I noticed that his eyes were gold and his tail was totally milk-chocolate brown - and then he pulled into a tree about 20 feet away to stare at me and the lure. As he did, another hawk slammed into my lure just about as hard as he could... however this hawk had a red-tail, and obviously had bells on. The bird on my lure was *my bird*, and the one in the tree was a juvenile red-tail, born that year, and probably only a two or three weeks out of his parents' care.

My hawk gave the youngster the 'back off buddy, mine!' stink-eye, and poofed his wings and feathers out to cover his food posessively, but the baby thought he still might have a chance to beg a bite from the older bird, so he came on down to the ground, walking and peeping like a chick while making obvious 'submissive' postures to my hawk. At this point, the wild juvenile was only 4 feet away from me, and not looking at me nor paying me any mind whatsoever. My bird, in an attempt to say 'I'm not giving any of my food to you, little free-loader', picked up his lure and flew up to my gloved fist with it to continue eating it there, but not before giving the baby another stink-eye. The juvenile peeped a few more sad peeps, looked at me, and then flew off to watch us from a low tree branch. He followed us at close range for the rest of our hunt, and even caught some sort of small rodent that we must have accidentally scared up (I was pleased that my adult bird didn't chase him to steal his catch. Good hawk!).

 

[Shellz]

Wow! Great info & story!

 

[Cynthia12]

Shok, great story, and good hawk indeed! You trained him well!

 

[CaCO3]

Yes, very informative!

Here's a pic of one of the locals looking at me through the skylight, a few summers ago.

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Oh nice shot CaCO! That's a juvenile red tail sunning him or herself (sometimes, just like chickens do, they lay completely flat while sunning... Like a wide, flat hawkie umbrella). Juvenile red tails are sweet as pies to work with and have great personalities, and are quite easily my favorite hawk of all.

 

[CaCO3]

Yes he/she does look pretty. Not so much when they come land on the bird feeder (I understand its totally their role in the food chain, its just not really idyllic). Mourning doves seem to be easy targets.

Today the roosters were protecting the hens from 747s and small aircraft passing overhead, with a few warning calls for the two plastic bags that are stuck waaaay up in the trees next door. I did see a hawk doing low circles, a little ways down the street this a.m. No chicken reaction whatsoever, just like two weeks ago when there were black bears in the neighbors yard. Red-tail hawks are a daily thing, round here. They nested in a tree, three doors down last year. I have some 6 w/o chicks with mom outside and worry a little letting them explore. Luckily they seem content under the forsythia or ripping out my landscaping. Only get free range while I'm home but it only takes a second.

Why do they call out so often? Really is not subtle. I understand that they hunt in teams, but you'd think they'd be more successful if they kept quiet?!?!

 

[Shokokuphoenix]

Those are food-begging 'KLEE KLEE KLEE KLEE KLEE KLEE' sounds; they cut that out after mom and dad stop feeding them and start laying the hammer down about getting their own food when they are hungry. The parent birds are the ones that make the classic 'hawk sound' of 'KEEEEERRRRrrrrrrrrr' and soft sounds to each other. You can always tell the babies from the adults by the 1. Moon-yellow or light brown eyes, 2. clear white chest over the crop area, 3. brown tail with thin dark bars all over it, and 4. when they soar, their primaries (the outer most 'finger' looking flight feathers) are considerably paler than the area of their wings (their secondaries) closest to their bodies.






Baby redtails are lazy creatures, and would rather sit and beg for handouts from mom and dad than get up and get their own food, so the parents rely on hunger to motivate them to quit sitting around and being lazy. This results in a LOT of food-begging during this 'weaning' phase (June through the end of July/early August, with it much worse at the end than the beginning).

In any case, expect it to completely end by mid-August/early-September.

PS: The more they call, the hungrier they are!