The little birds that normally gather around the bird feeder in our back yard were definitely not present for the visit. It seems that Cooper’s Hawk is a predator of small rodents and birds as large as doves and pheasants. This one appears to be an adult male hawk, with a wingspan of about 30 inches.
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From WikiPedia:
These birds capture prey from cover or while flying quickly through dense vegetation, relying almost totally on surprise. Most prey are mid-sized birds, with typical prey including American Robins, jays, woodpeckers, European Starlings, icterids and doves. Birds preyed on can range in size from wood-warblers to Ring-necked Pheasants. Cooper’s Hawks also eat small mammals, especially rodents such as chipmunks and tree squirrels. Mammalian prey can be as small as mice and as large as hares. Other possibilities are lizards, frogs, snakes and large insects. The hawks often pluck the feathers off their prey on a post or other perch. They are increasingly seen hunting smaller songbirds in backyards with feeders. They will perch in trees overlooking the feeders, then swoop down and scatter the other birds in order to capture one in flight.
Policy should be based on sound science, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population has increased. I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, we cannot primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes. The drastic economic measures being pushed by dogmatic environmentalists won’t change the weather, but will dramatically change our economy for the worse.