Almost anyone with a backyard bird feeder has been a witness.
You're staring out your window, admiring a variety of birds alighting, grab a seed and hang for a few moments, then fly off. Then they're back again.
Then, whoosh, a streak dive bombs, talons snaring a helpless songbird.
Birds scatter in terror. There are feathers floating in the air.
Or maybe you didn't witness the massacre. But the next time you're out refilling the feeders, you find the puff of scattered feathers on the ground.
The hawk attacked again.
You are, after all, trying to help the birds by feeding them. So it's only natural to wonder: Am I dooming birds by feeding them?
Here are several reasons why you should banish your guilt.
One, consider that birds clustered at your feeders mean more eyes on the lookout for hawks and other predators, including cats.
And realize that songbirds are hard to catch. The most likely targets are cardinals, mockingbirds, pigeons, sparrows, chickadees and titmice.
Hawks most likely to target feeders are sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks.
Birder Stephen W. Kress makes the case in Audubon magazine that feeders might actually reduce predation since they reduce the time birds need to be out foraging for food.
Thus, they have more idle time to be alert for those that would eat them.
Studies have shown that the birds caught by predators often are ones slowed by disease -- think house finches with eye disease of recent years -- or weakness, old age or are dimwitted.
Thus, notes Scott Weidensaul, a nationally known bird expert and author from Schuylkill Haven, "the hawks are probably helping to control the spread of pathogens."
Besides, notes Weidensaul, "if the hawks come back too many times, the birds will avoid the spot, so in a way it's a self-regulating system."
If a hawk has zeroed in on your feeders with multiple attacks, take them down for a few days, advises the
www.wild-bird-watching.com Web site.
The hawk will move on and the birds will quickly return to your feeders.
There are some things you can do to lessen the chance of feeder birds becoming a raptor meal.
Place your feeders near bushes, evergreen shrubs and trees where birds can quickly escape or stage before making a quick fly to the feeder.
If you don't have such cover, plant some shrubs next spring. Weidensaul, each year after the holidays, attaches four Christmas trees to stakes near his feeders. They provide escape cover and a nice windbreak throughout winter.
Weidensaul notes that one Cooper's hawk that had targeted his feeders adopted an effective killing strategy. It would swoop over the top of the house and dive straight down to scatter birds into the corner of the porch, where they couldn't escape momentarily or would be stunned when they hit the walls.
Weidensaul is one who, though he loves all birds, doesn't begrudge birds of prey their chance to eat, also.
"They are bird feeders, after all," he says. And nearly one-third of all adults in the United States now engage in bird feeding, to various degrees.
Somewhere around a billion pounds of birdseed is placed out each year, as well as tons of suet or seed cakes.
"You will never eliminate predation. Nor should you try to," says Weidensaul.
"Let's face it, most Americans these days don't have an opportunity to see predation up close. They won't see a mountain lion take down an elk from their backyard window.
"But they can look out to see this incredible action drama play out. It's not always the most pleasant thing to watch, but it is the most riveting."
