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From: rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kehaar)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Suburban Raptors
Message-ID: <1989Nov29.032434.9233@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 89 03:24:34 GMT
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kehaar)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lines: 57

In article <2160@heavens-gate.lucid.com> pab@lucid.com (Peter Benson) writes:
>
>Well this discussion is way off birds, but my experience is a bit a of
>twist.  My cat was most likely eaten by a redtail.  It was in a pretty
>remote place, and I don't think it's very likely to happen anywhere very
>suburban.  I missed the cat when she disappeared, but I felt it was a much
>better way to go than getting run over by a car.  She was probably
>encroaching on the turf of the redtails.  Though the hawks didn't do near
>as good a job at keeping the squirrels out of my food.  (Near this time I
>had a redtail drop the claws and tail of an eaten sharp shinned(?) hawk on
>the hood of my car.  I took it as an omen that the cat was really gone.)
>
You are probably right about your cat getting eaten by a red-tailed hawk.  
However, I find it extremely odd that a red-tail would drop the talons and
rectrices (tailfeathers) of a eaten sharp-shinned hawk, for two reasons.  One,
the sharp-shin is highly manuverable--far more so than a big buteo.  Further,
the red-tail is not generally considered a bird-eater, but preys primarily on
rodents.  However, a hawk will take whatever is easiest, and if it came upon
a sick or wounded sharp-shin, the sharp-shin would probably become dinner.
The other reason that this is odd, though, is the way this red-tail handled
it's prey.  First, most bird-eaters will swallow the rectrices along with the
pygostyle (the muscle group which controls the tailfeathers).  Also, a red-tail
will _always_ take apart it's prey on the ground, and never (at least that I
heard of) carry the inedible remains of their prey around.

>I see a lot of turkey vultures, and hawks (redtails mostly, but some
>coopers hawks(?)) around where I live and work (mostly suburban Palo Alto
>and Menlo Park, CA).  Where do they eat?  I see vultures all the time.  The
>suburban area can't be a very good place to see carrion.  I have seen some
>coopers hawks(?) going after pigeons.  Are they mostly just straying into
>the 'burbs from the bay or the hills, or do they find anything to eat
>there?  Do we have any other reports of raptor and vulture (are vultures
>considered raptors too?) behavior in the 'burbs.

Yes, vultures are considered bona fide raptors. A surprising amount of carrion 
is present in a suburban area.  However, during lean times, the 
vultures will act as hawks and hunt rodents, which they are perfectly 
capable of doing.  Also, Coopers Hawks are shy birds of the deep forest.
However, Sharp-Shinned Hawks have nothing against the suburbs when it comes 
to hunting, and you might also look to see if these "Cooper's Hawks" are 
Merlins, which go under the alias "Pigeon Hawk."  However, telling 
between Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-Shinned Hawks in some cases is the most
difficult of all raptor identification puzzles.  However, even during migration,Cooper's Hawks tend to stick to the forests.  A suburban Cooper's would be the 
rarest of rarities.

But, recall the fundamental rule of birding:  Birds never follow human-set 
rules, at least not all of the time.  This rule is the reason birding is 
so fun...


--
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R. Cody Buchmann                             ^.^  
   "Kehaar"                 

email: rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu       "Now I fly for you..." - Watership Down
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