Small bird hunting hawks come to yards in the winter: West Texas

[Donna]

Published: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 7:25 PM CST
In a well landscaped backyard, with berry bearing shrubs, both deciduous and evergreen trees and two or three well stocked bird feeders, a spotted towhee was scratching under a shrub. House finches were busy depleting the stock of sunflower seeds, white crowned sparrows and white winged doves were beneath the feeders, retrieving seeds dropped by the finches. A robin was eating berries and a flicker inspected a tree trunk.

Suddenly the peaceful scene erupted in chaos. Birds flew erratically in all directions and a small, round winged raptor with a long tail jetted into the yard, through the trees, over the shrubbery, around the house, back into the trees. The little hawk was so agile, so well adapted to flying through thick growth, that scarcely a leaf or twig vibrated as it darted into the shrubbery. It reappeared with a house sparrow in its talons, and perched on the fence and began plucking feathers from its prey.

The intruder was an accipiter (ak-SIP-ih-ter), a name derived from a Latin word meaning “to seize.� The accipiters are bird catching hawks and are frequent visitors to successful feeding stations. Midland County hosts two species -- sharp shinned hawk and Cooper’s hawk. Sharpies arrive about the third week of September and stay until early May. Cooper’s hawks arrive a week or two later, and are usually gone by May 1. Accipiters are much more common in residential areas than in open country, and are also found in the parts of Midland Draw that are wooded.

Both are forest dwellers in the breeding season. The sharp shinned breeds in the northern boreal forest and in the coniferous woodlands in the mountains of the U. S. West. The Cooper’s hawk is at home in more southern latitudes, just barely crossing the Canadian border. It has nested in every one of the lower 48 states, but is a very rare breeder in Texas. Cooper’s hawk is one species that has benefited from the reduction of vast tracts of primeval forest to discontinuous woodlands, as it prefers to hunt in open areas near its nest.

Telling accipiters apart is the most difficult problem facing serious birders -- even veteran birders are often content to say, “I saw an accipiter today,� not even making a guess as to which species. The sharp shinned is the smaller of the two species, but males and females are different sized, and the female sharpie is almost as large as a male Cooper’s -- so size is not very helpful. Adults of both are blue-gray above and have white underparts with red brown crossbars. Both have eye stripes, white undertail coverts and banded tails. Immatures have brown underparts and the underparts are streaked vertically with brown or black.

Another bird hunting hawk of the winter, but not nearly as common are merlins. Lark buntings and white crowned sparrows foraged in tall tumbleweeds and meadowlarks sang early morning melodies. Out of nowhere a small hawk appeared, wings beating strongly as he flew just above the mesquite bushes. The small birds vanished and the hawk coursed by, his angular wings beating with short, powerful strokes. This was no sharp shinned hawk that flies with a flap, flap, flap, sail. His pointed wings emphasized that this was a falcon, not a sharpie in a hurry. His dark, checkered underwing and his dark tail with light bands made it obvious he was not a kestrel. Neither was his strong, direct flight anything like the buoyant, dainty flight of a kestrel. The merlin flew across an open field to the south, made a brief pass at a flock of pigeons and was gone.

In the summer, merlins live in the boreal forest, near parklike openings or barrens or bogs, for they must have open country for hunting. In winter many move southward throughout western United States, but they are nowhere common during the cold season. Midnats rarely see more than two a year, those usually in January. Merlins catch their prey in short, fast dashes -- they do not stoop like peregrine falcons. For this reason they like open country where the birds they are chasing have fewer places to hide. They often hunt flocking species; blackbirds, horned larks, longspurs, lark buntings in open fields, and shorebirds over mud flats. Merlins sometimes follow a northern harrier, (a larger hawk) seeking prey flushed by the larger bird. Merlins are about the size of doves, and can capture and kill birds ranging in size from hummingbirds to pigeons.

The late Frances Williams was the editor of the Midland Naturalists’ newsletter, “The Phalarope,â€� for 35 years. This story was developed from her work.