Bird of Prey

[lulu5kamz]

A large bird tries to catch a smaller bird. Anybody know what type of bird this is?

 

[nayr]

Its a Cooper Hawk, got those at my moms house.. had one take a bird right out of a tree as I was looking at it (the prey), startled the shit out of me.. amazing creatures..

they hunt song birds with some impressive speed and stealth, badass getting it on video.

 

[nayr]

if you needed further proof how badass these guys are:

These birds capture prey from cover or while flying quickly through dense vegetation, relying almost totally on surprise. One study showed that this is a quite dangerous hunting style. More than 300 Cooper's hawk skeletons were investigated and 23% revealed healed fractures in the bones of the chest.[3] Cooper's hawks prey almost exclusively on small to mid-sized birds. Typical prey species include American robins, other thrushes, jays, woodpeckers, European starlings,quail, icterids, cuckoos, pigeons and doves. Birds preyed on can range in size from wood-warblers to ring-necked pheasants. They may also prey upon the raptorAmerican kestrel and other smaller raptors, including their cousin the sharp-shinned hawk.[12] They have been known to rob nests and may supplement their diet with small mammals such as chipmunks, hares, mice, squirrels, and bats.[3][13] Even more rarely, they may prey on lizards, frogs, or snakes. It normally catches its prey with its feet and kills it by repeatedly squeezing it and holding it away from its body until it dies. They have also been seen drowning their prey, holding it underwater until it stops moving.[3] The hawks often pluck the feathers off their prey on a post or other perch. They also hunt songbirds at backyard feeders, perching nearby then swooping down and scattering the birds to single one out in flight. They may pursue prey on the ground by half running and half flying.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper's_hawk

they are pretty distinct in the air, more swept wings than a typical red-tail hawk.. good for dive bombing I suppose, all the song birds at my moms and grandmothers go dead silent when they are in the sky.

 

[lulu5kamz]

if you needed further proof how badass these guys are:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper's_hawk

they are pretty distinct in the air, more swept wings than a typical red-tail hawk.. good for dive bombing I suppose, all the song birds at my moms and grandmothers go dead silent when they are in the sky.

Thanks for the link. This is the first time I noticed this type of bird around our area. The only thing larger I've seen are the turkey vultures we see almost on a daily basis. Looks like the 2 little song birds got away from this cooper's hawk that wanted to make a meal out of one of them.

 

[lulu5kamz]

Someone on my YouTube channel said that this is actually a Red-Tailed Hawk. After comparing pictures of both, I think i agree. The clue is the color of the tail. The Cooper's Hawk does not have any red in the color of the tail. Here is a picture of the Red-Tailed Hawk.

Here is a snapshot from the video.

 

[code2]

Cool bird interesting the they use thermal up draft to circle up to a couple thousand feet and they hit between 100 to 120 MPH on a dive.

 

[beepsilver]

Unfortunately the scene I saw a couple of months ago here near Omaha was not caught on camera, but I live within view of a large swath of tall wild grass/weeds that runs below a line of high tension wires. There are several large hawks (and the occasional horned owl) that you can frequently see hunting there. Anyway, an hour or so before dusk, about 100 yards away, I witnessed a very large hawk dive-bomb a mature rabbit--there was a violent scuffle on the ground for at least 5 seconds until the hawk's wings stopped flailing--indicating it had subdued the rabbit by gripping it in its talons. A moment later the hawk started to take flight, but even for this large hawk, the weight of the rabbit posed quite a challenge--I couldn't tell if the rabbit was dead or alive at this point, but I quickly discovered that when the hawk either decided to let go of the rabbit, or when the rabbit wriggled free, it dropped from about 3 feet in the air and hit the ground in a dead run! The hawk must have thought it could handle the weight of the rabbit because it quickly turned and regained hot pursuit. Unfortunately the direction of the rabbit's escape took the whole scene away from my view so I'll never know if the rabbit made a getaway--regardless, gripped and carried in hawk's talons would not make for a "clean" getaway I'm sure.