New downtown Ithaca visitor not a vegetarian

[Donna]

The sighting of a young Cooper's hawk in downtown Ithaca on Monday is not out of character for the bird, which has been known to make a living hunting in cities, said a Cornell University ornithologist.

Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said the bird is typically a forest-dweller and eats primarily other birds, like pigeons and starlings. It's not uncommon to see Cooper's hawks prowling around bird feeders.

"It's pretty fun to be able to see these things right outside your window," he said.

The Cooper's hawk was one of several species that felt the effects of DDT and overhunting, McGowan said. But over the past two decades, the population has seen a resurgence, more than doubling its range in New York since 1980.
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Lang Elliott, a local naturalist and nature sounds archivist, said the bird was guarding a recent kill Monday morning at the DeWitt Mall.

"Most people like these birds because they're magnificent and they're a native species," Elliott said. "We think that one had a pigeon, but by the time I saw it, it was just a pile of flesh. It's just sort of nice that it perched there and let everybody look at it."

Caption: A juvenile Cooper's hawk calls out about 11 o'clock Monday morning from its perch on the Cayuga Street side of the DeWitt Mall building in downtown Ithaca. The hawk was crouched over its prey for more than 40 minutes while passersby stopped to look through cameras and binoculars before it resumed eating.