Apparently Midwestern hawks, or at least certain hawks in certain areas, have very different hunting patterns than Eastern ones. I can confirm, unfortunately, as a first-hand witness to the fact that, as Nambroth from NY mentioned earlier, a hawk CAN and will kill a large chicken, attempt to bring it home to its young in a nest, fail to be able to take it and start tearing it apart. It will then fly off with a bit of leg and thigh and continue coming back for the rest. If it is getting dark it will return early the next morning and if the chicken was huge it can continue this 'parts delivery' process for at least 3 days. It will NOT, in my experience, ever return after dusk, preferring bright daylight to observe if it is safe to return.
There are a combination of factors involved including but not limited to: the amount of wild prey available in the area such as wild hares, voles (aka field mice), etc., whether it has ever tasted chicken before and realizes how easy it is to kill them, whether it is male or female, whether it has a nest of young to feed, how badly the previous winter impacted other sources of food, and so on. A desperate animal might resort to desperate measures.
Bantams are always easy prey to raptors, hawks and falcons alike, at least in the East anyway.
But I'm talking about very large Buff Orpingtons! When I was a teenager a neighbor down the road sold their home and had to re-home about a dozen Buff Orpingtons in a hurry. I'd never had chickens before, or any fowl for that matter, and ours was one of the only yards that had a perimeter fence at the time. So she drove over and literally dumped us with her birds without really asking if it was alright - there wasn't even a coop built or any shelter available at the time for goodness sake! I suppose it was for the best as my parents were city folk and the experience, even though it turned out tragic, left me with a lifelong love of chickens. (I would've probably gotten into chickens eventually because I'm a country gal and my grandfather came from a long line of farmers and instilled in me a love of animals since childhood.) At any rate, before a shelter was properly finished the hawk problems began. Some roosts were quickly made and a makeshift tarp-shelter under a tree for their first night. Then a small run made of chicken wire the lady left us - my first and last experience with that type of wire as I decided to not use it again. Finally got some wood to make a safer shelter but that took over a week. Their previous 'owner' had said to let them free-range everyday in the afternoons so I tried to follow her advice. It had been a pretty cold and harsh winter season prior to a mild spring and as the weather was starting to get fairly hot the hawk had offspring to feed with a nest on a tall tree in our neighbor's yard, and it decided that chicken was on the menu. It attacked the smallest hen first. By smallest, bear in mind that these were full grown Orpington hens with the youngest being 2 years old and some up to 4 years old. I found a torn up carcass and as soon as the hawk saw me walking in her direction she flew off and kept watch from a safe distance on a tree. I disposed of the carcass and kept the birds in their run the next day but around the same time in the afternoon she returned and landed INSIDE the run and attacked and killed another hen, tearing off a large piece and flying to her nest. I did my best and attempted to lock the others in their not-so-great shelter and did not let them out again for a few days except with me present to supervise them for up to an hour or two of exercise. Eventually the hawk tried everything to outwit us and discovered that it was best to attack closer and closer and took another with me right there in broad daylight! Other land predators tore the cheap and thin chicken wire and we lost some to four-legged nocturnal predators - I suspected raccoon by the tracks. The wire was promptly fixed. Then came various chicken illnesses until finally, several months after they had first arrived, only the oldest and largest hen remained. It had been a long, heartbreaking battle with predators and diseases and looking back, the birds were quite weak and sickly when they had arrived, only I didn't realize it then. The largest hen was somewhere around 9 lbs. or so and she became a pet but one day the hawk got desperate and landed on the ground and attacked and killed it right in front of me. It is a tragic feeling to be face-to-face with a gorgeous predator (I know this will sound terrible but it's true, it was one of the most beautiful birds I ever saw with its highly intelligent, piercing eyes) who is standing on the ground with a beautiful chicken that you have loved and cared for for many months. It always maintained a distance of quite a few feet away so that it was confident that I could never reach it without it having enough time to fly off. Heartbroken, I went home and couldn't bring myself to go back outside to retrieve whatever of the carcass it was going to leave behind. The next morning I was furious to find the hawk shamelessly tearing another piece of carcass and flying off in the direction of its nest. I had never let a carcass out overnight before and finally realized why it was so persistent the next morning after the previous kills, scanning and searching the yard like it was looking for something terribly important for hours on end. I had always thought that it was looking for the next victim to kill, but it turned out it was looking for the previous day's kill to finish off. I lifted up the carcass with a glove and she screeched and screeched as if begging for me to drop it for her since it was dead anyway. Well, let bygones be bygones. I gave in to her request and dropped it, it was cool in the evenings and the meat was still fresh as from a refrigerator, there wasn't anything foul-smelling as she had cleaned out the organ cavity the day before and I was curious as to how far she'd go. As soon as I had walked a short distance away she swooped down and landed on the ground and tore off a piece, stopped to gratefully but cautiously glance at me and flew to her nest. That hawk was a good mother, I'll give her that. She did that twice a day for a total of 3 days. It's been many, many years now but despite the heartache and trouble she caused me, I have always regarded her as a friend. I'd see her fly off with snakes, voles, rats, wild hares over the years and I knew it was her because every year she made her nest in the same tree and would fly to my yard to the tree where the Orpingtons used to be and look at me, not wickedly but strangely as though she always remembered that last incident. It was many years before I was able to purchase chickens of my own and I have never been that close to a hawk again.
In the past few years falcons in our area have proved to be a real problem. Who would've thought! I don't know if they're crazy or what but they were shorter than the hen they killed!
Having said all of this, not all chickens are as predator-prone as Orpingtons, which are docile, timid, slow and speaking from the experience with the line I was given, not terribly keen on keeping a lookout for predators in order to attempt to hide.
I had an Egyptian Fayoumi rooster attack and claw a falcon who had landed in our yard not 50 feet away from me and was about to attempt to attack a Fayoumi hen on foot! Fayoumis are very predator savvy, but like all chickens, they are not predator-proof so even though they can really thwart a raptor by hiding under trees, coops, etc. eventually an observant raptor can get them, and sadly we had lost a beautiful hen the week before - yes, to a falcon. I know the difference and have been studying field guides since I was a child. The falcon exhibited the same exact behavior as the mother hawk had decades ago, it took a piece towards the end of the day and returned the next morning looking for the rest of the meat/carcass. Our Fayoumi cock was always sweet-natured towards us but I had never realized that he was so protective of his hens so when that crazy falcon was walking up to a hen my cock sparred the falcon from the back. He was never aggressive so I had only sanded his spurs a little so they were long enough to cause a bleeding wound on the falcon and the falcon was a little knocked out for a few seconds, then came to and flew off. My hen was untouched thanks to that brave rooster. But don't misunderstand this as advice to let Fayoumis run wild -- please do NOT leave your Fayoumis unprotected if you have a hawk/falcon/raptor problem - they're too beautiful and precious genetically to let the predators take them and remember, they're just chickens. My Fayoumis always loved going home to their coop at night and I attribute part of that to having such a fine rooster who was the first to go home and roost every night, earlier than any of the many other breeds I have ever kept or raised.
A large run was made of sturdy 2x4 metal fence and some bird netting installed on the top and that will definitely prevent hawk attacks, but the crazy falcons around here occasionally try to crash into it to get it, thankfully it was thick netting and it didn't tear. In my entire life I have not seen such dumb falcons - they seem to actually hurt themselves when they crash into that netting but they're just lazy and need to get to work hunting voles and leave my run alone.
