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A little background, ever since we put solar pannels on our roof it has become the favorite hangout for every pigeon in the neighborhood, until today. I was heading out the back door of my house and noticeed a pigeon in the yard when out of nowhere this young redtailed hawk comes down and kills it 10 feet from me. It started tearing it apart before it noticed that I was right there and then tried to lift off with the pigeon but can't quite get the lift it needs to make it over the fence and since I'm right there it takes off to the neighbor's roof across the street. By the way my two daughters are watching the whole thing from the livingroom window after I tell them what is going on outside. We are watching as the hawk returns to the yard grabs the pigeon and struggling mightily makes it to the top of the fence, where it takes a break. After a bit it took off and now I have to wash blood offf the fence. Watching that hawk stoop onto that pigeon was amazing, the pigeon was dead instantly and I was amazed at the speed of the attack. I hope that hawk makes our neighboorhood his favorite hunting ground since I am sick of cleaning pidgeon crap off my back porch. The girls were simply amazed at the ferocity of nature and watched in awe as nature took it's course right outside our house. I was the first time in a long time something happened that drug them away from the TV and was more interesting to watch. They were glued to nature's display of prey vs. predator.

No you don't, just leave it there as a message to pigeons everywhere.

JK, really cool to see that up close, hopefully the hawk will keep on killing the pigeons.

We seem to have a lot of those Hawks around here lately...

A couple years ago I was watching the bird feeder out the kitchen window. A small hawk of some kind came around the house doing 60+ and snagged a ground feeder so fast that I hardly saw it while watching it.

Always great to hear raptor stories. Read one once about some dude in NYC. He had a Peregrine Falcon nest out on his fire escape. Would bring chunks of pigeon back. Sounds true enough.

Probably a Coopers Hawk or Sharp Shinned Hawk. I have had Coops nesting here for 40 0dd years. That's their preferred attack mode. They'll spot prey from a distance and next thing you know the lightning strikes! They love my yard because I have enough of the right kind of trees and enough prairie species that the birds really like it. Makes for good food supply for the Coops chicks and an easy picking setup. I have had my dogs down under Peregrines and Peregrine/Gyr crosses and they are fun to watch, but Coops, Sharpies and Gos' are just plain astonishing Once I got to watch a Gos light out after a rooster pheasant one of .my dogs had pointed. The Gos was sitting in a big red pine, and when that rooster started off the ground he came out of the red pine with the after burners lit and flew that rooster right into the ground. The grass was high enough I couldn't see hit hit the rooster, but neither came back up while watched and waited. I have seen Gos take a number of grouse. It' just unbelievable to see them just fly the grouse down.

Lots of red tails down here in the winter. They give rabbits fits.

Read a story years ago I'm trying to find, great story about three crows that were pestering a hawk. They all landed in a field, crows wouldn't let the hawk come close to it, but would hold a certain distance. Then the hawk saw its mate bombing out of the sky, so it took off along with the crows. Said the second hawk hit one crow at full speed, nothing but feathers everywhere, made a hard bank, hit another crow. The first hawk had an altitude advantage over the remaining crow, who was trying to GTFO of there, but he got taken out too. Then they ate them.

So what do they do on even years?

I've got a red shouldered hawk nesting about 50 yards away from my house this year. Between them and the family of foxes denned up under the neighbors shed, the chipmunk population is way down.

I didn't see it but this afternoon my wife watched a large hawk do a number on a killdeer chick. He'd been hanging around watching these 4 day old chicks and my wife was nervous because she has some young chickens nearby. She was amazed at how fast he nailed the killdeer. I didn't see it and don't know what species it was other than large and reddish dark brown. I'm guessing it was a redtail. We have a lot of them here.

Folks, Lightning has struck twice in my back yard, all that was left was a pile of feathers in almost the exact spot as last time. I am having a hard time seeing any pigeons on my roof anymore. The hawk is my best friend!

The local hawks sure aren't endangering the collared dove population much. They're all over the place. Maybe they just breed faster than the hawks can eat.

I like seeing them clean up on the finches, oreoles, blue birds, robins, mockingbirds, quail and warblers. Right.

There was a breeding pair of eagles at a lake where I lived growing up. One day while fishing in a canoe there was a seagull floating around on the lake, keep in mind 150 miles inland. An eagle came nearly straight down from above and when he got nearly to the water he swept across the surface blasting that seagull and rolling him across the surface. Just when the seagull came to a rest the second eagle hit him and finished the job. It was amazing.

That is about 90% BS. Once in a while the coops will get a dove. Mostly it's starlings, sparrows cat birds and black birds. Most of the native species have evolved with coopers hawks and spend a lot of time in trees whereas the coops because of their high speed attacks around buildings and trees are taking their meals as they are getting off the ground. Quail will catch hell from them on occasion, but during the years I raised them for working my dogs I never lost a bird to any raptors. Great Horned Owls and Goshawks can be very hard on localized grouse populations, much more so than fox.

We have blue birds, robins, and a bunch of birds around the house. I can't recall seeing a hawk around to pick on them in a long time. Its been years. The cur is worse about catching birds than hawks are, but thankfully he is 4 now and has slowed just a bit and we see him catch birds out of the air like he used to when young.

Back when I was in high school, we had a marsh hawk that made a real nice living busting sparrows off our birdfeeder. We had a birdfeeder in a flowering crabapple tree about 15 ft. off the kitchen window. The hawk would stoop from behind the house, using it for cover, wheel around and fly right into the area of the feeder, driving the birds towards the house. He'd trap a bird, usually a sparrow in the little bushes that straddled our front steps,blast right into the bush, and retrieve his meal. Saw him do it several times.

We now have a pair of little screech owls that hang out in one of several pine trees in the back yard. When we have a fire in the little fire pit on the back porch, they light in the adjacent pine tree and pick off bugs hovering over the back patio. Cool to see-neat little birds. We can always tell when they come in, because we hear them landing in the tree nearby.

There's a mated pair of Red Tails that live here on the ranch year around. The Crows will occasionally try to harass them, but it doesn't last long. The population of crows seems to be dropping, too.

There's also a mated pair of Great Horned Owls here. Lost one barn cat to them.

Ed

I have what I think are the coopers hawk? little guys that swoop in about as fast as anything I have ever seen they hit with a crack and scream like crazy. They are not always successful as I have found 2 dead and another inured who seemed to recover as it flew away after some time.
Just yesterday I saw a crow lay a beating on one of these little hawks chasing it away from its nesting area.
I am facinated by the crows who come here and nest in my yard and eat all the mice and voles, I will never shoot another crow as they chitkick the starlings and swallows and never see one around, period, new respect for a crow.
The eagles here will take out the cats and small dogs so they are alittle hard on the pet population.