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From: www@ingres.com (Bill White)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Bird feeding Station
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.155028.9415@ingres.Ingres.COM>
Date: 24 Apr 91 15:50:28 GMT
References: <1991Apr15.225115.3695@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> <1991Apr21.142938.12830@yang.earlham.edu> <1991Apr22.195905.24247@cbnewsj.att.com>
Reply-To: white@Ingres.COM (Bill White)
Distribution: na
Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501
Lines: 40

In article <1991Apr22.195905.24247@cbnewsj.att.com> donnelly@cbnewsj.att.com (jeffrey.m.donnelly) writes:
>
>YIKES!
>
>This morning I saw a Coopers Hawk eating a bird that it presumably caught
>at our feeder.

        [stuff deleted]
>
>I understand that hawks have to eat too, but I don't particularly want them
>eating the birds that come to our house to eat.  Feels sort of unhospitable.
>
>What should I do if anything to make our feeder "safer"?
>
>Will this hawk think "Oh great!  I never new this place was here, I'm gonna
>hang out here forever"?

I had a similar experience a few years ago in New Hampshire.  I worried
that it would get to be a pattern, but it only happened once.

>
>What tecniques might a Coopers Hawk use to catch its meal?

I was lucky enough to witness the whole thing:  The hawk streaked in out
of a wooded area next to the house and all the birds at the feeder scattered
in a panic.  One of them crashed into the window and dropped to the ground
stunned -- and the hawk was on him in a flash.  Gripping its victim, it
paused there on the ground a few seconds and glared right into my eyes, then
it lifted off and carried its meal back into the woods.

I don't know what kind of hawk this was.  All I remember about it now was
that it had bright red eyes.

Oh, by the way, ours were evening grossbeaks; beautiful birds, exciting as
it was to see this, I was really disturbed to see one of them get eaten!

>
>Jeff (A somewhat shocked bird watcher/feeder)

--Bill