We who set out banquets for the birds in our backyards are usually motivated by two things. WeÕre fascinated by the diversity, beauty and interesting behaviors of wild creatures. Songbirds happen to be among natureÕs most interesting and beautiful. We may also fancy ourselves as playing a role in the survival of the birds that come to our suet, sunflower, thistle and other feeders for a meal; particularly in the depths of winter.
This past weekend, with temperatures reaching more than 20 degrees below zero, it was one of those times when we could be forgiven for patting ourselves on the back for helping fuel the metabolisms that keep these tiny creatures alive under such harsh conditions. But the truth is, the birds are not nearly as dependent on our generosity as we think. Once in a great while, our good intentions may even contribute to a fatal outcome, as was proven in my own backyard.
Early Saturday morning, the Weather Channel shared the grim news that we had reached the lowest temperature of the winter, with worse in store. I swaddled myself in warm clothes and went out to refill the sunflower feeder, and place new blocks of suet in the suet cage. Both are in an ornamental crabapple tree just beyond our family room windows. Another, filled with an "all species" mix of cracked corn, millet and other seeds, and a thistle feeder for the finches, hang in a second, larger crab.
Our yard is not large, but is filled with shrubs and trees. Besides the two crabs, there are birch, spruce and two towering Norway pines. There are several hedges and individual plantings of both deciduous and evergreen shrubs. In short, there's no lack of cover where birds can find shelter from the worst winter winds, and - hopefully - from the limited number of predators that roam our neighborhood.
The birds seemed to be taking advantage of the replenished feeders. White and red-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers were fueling up on the suet. I even spotted a cedar waxwing with a chunk of suet in his bill. He had to work hard to get this high-energy morsel down his gullet. I watched to see if other waxwings would follow his lead, but the rest were - as usual - focused on the crabs.
The sunflower feeder was also being targeted, mostly by the chickadees and nuthatches. The plastic baffle I had hung above it several weeks ago has miraculously kept it from being emptied by the squirrels. Though I enjoy their antics, squirrels can clean out a feeder in no time, keeping the birds away in the process. Victories over squirrels are rare, so I feel good about this one, despite the grief I got for heavily pruning the tree to remove "launching pads" for squirrels trying to jump onto the feeder.
The underclass in local bird society is the misnamed English, or house, sparrow, which is really a weaver finch. Their overabundance and ability to dominate feeding stations do not endear them to most bird lovers. Their lack of color and exotic appeal doesn't help their case, either. But what happened to one hapless "sparrow" in my backyard this weekend left me a little more sympathetic.
The wall of windows across our family room gives us a view of most of the feeders, and the majority of the bird activity that goes on in our yard. Whatever you might be doing, you can look out and see what's going on in the immediate neighborhood. As it happened, I was heading to the back door to take out the recycling, when I saw a large bird land in one of the crabs.
Almost immediately it dove from the branch into a row of arbor vitae shrubs. A small bird came rushing out, and the larger bird followed in hot pursuit. After several unproductive rushes, the pursuer came to rest in the nearest of the ornamental crabs. The only really large birds usually found in our neighborhood are crows, and the less common pileated woodpeckers. This was neither. It was unmistakably a hawk.
I don't think of our neighborhood as raptor territory, though we're just a block away from the Mississippi, where eagles are not an uncommon sight. Some stretches of the nearby river bottoms are heavily forested, thus the presence of pileated woodpeckers. The neighbor across the street once had a ruffed grouse crash through his kitchen window. So, all in all, a hawk should be no huge surprise.
I stared at it, looking for identification clues, not moving for fear of startling it into flight. My first thought was "goshawk," which commonly prey on grouse. I'm not very experienced in hawk identification, but a look at my trusty field guide ruled out a goshawk. All signs pointed to it being a sharp-shinned hawk, a bird very similar to the slightly larger, scarcer, Cooper's hawk.
This bird was large compared to our normal winter birdlife, but small as hawks go, just a foot or slightly larger in length with a dark, banded, squarish tail, orange-toned breast and cheeks, and dark gray on its back. It sat there staring intently from side to side. Humans tend to attribute our own traits to animals, but - even though conscious of this habit - I still found its stare menacing. Maybe that's because we know how violently a hawk makes its living.
I was pondering its inability to catch the bird it had been chasing, recalling a friend's story of watching a woodcock pursued by a hawk while deer hunting this fall. Not every hawk gets its prey, I mused. As I watched, I caught a shadowy, flitting movement at the edge of my vision. In that same instant the hawk launched itself from the tree. Contact between prey and predator was hidden by a curtain. But as I stepped closer to the windows I saw them - almost hovering - then coming to earth under the tree.
In the hawk's talons was an English sparrow. Its attack had been no simple power dive from high above an unsuspecting victim, as we know the tactic of falcons and some hawks to be. This was an interceptor flight, more like a fighter plane darting in to attack an enemy in a dogfight.
The hawk held its prey tightly in its talons on the ground looking about, as if nervous, to confirm that it was in no danger. Then it began methodically removing feathers from its hapless victim, as if plucking a chicken, and proceeded to consume it almost totally, right there on the spot. All that was left was a scattering of feathers. The entire process couldn't have taken 10 minutes. Credit the hawk for wasting nothing.
It can be tempting to intervene in an event like this, to scare off the attacker in time to save the victim. Then, too, I could have scared off the hawk when it first came to rest in my crabapple tree. But a hawk is a grand creature in its own right, and I'm sure it would have found a meal elsewhere. And, I would have missed this rarely-seen drama, this uncommon insight into the sometimes-grim nature of nature.
How would I have reacted had the sparrow been a downy woodpecker, or a cedar waxwing? Or a ruffed grouse, had I been out hunting? We tend to be protective of what we value most. Selfish and human as I am, I value a grouse more than a sparrow. But the right thing - for me, at least - would be to let nature take its course, whether in the wild, or in the backyard where I attract birds with my feeders. The sharp-shinned hawk was merely responding as evolution equipped it: find food and eat.
That said, I hope my sharp-shinned guest does not make visiting our songbird cafeteria a regular event.
