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Hawks at the Feeder

You either love them or you hate them, but if you have a feeder, eventually you are going to have a hawk stop by. The truth is, you probably already have. You may not have noticed it, because when a hawk makes a pass at a feeder it is usually quick and the hawk does not hang around afterwards. I had a sharp-shipped hawk hunt the birds at my feeder one winter, and although he was around every day, it was rare that I caught a glimpse of him. (I know it was a him in this case because I was banding in my yard at the time and caught him. I could sometimes see the band when I spotted him perched in the trees at the back of the yard.)

A lot of the time a hawk just makes a brief stop on its way south or north, sort of like dashing into the donut shop on the way to the office. Sometimes, however, the hawk settles in for a while. It is on those occasions that the phone starts ringing:

"How can I get rid of this thing? It's killing my birds!"

Well, yes it is. That is what certain kinds of hawks do. Other kinds kill rabbits, and some take fish, while some favor reptiles, and a few eat insects, but all hawks hunt, and it is the bird hunters that settle in at the feeders. The most common feeder-hunting hawks are the accipiters, sharp-shinneds and Cooper's hawks. They are woodland bird hunters supreme, and an active, well-stocked feeding station is quite an attraction as far as they are concerned. Very rarely a merlin or a red-shouldered hawk will show up at a feeding station, but 99 percent of the reports are of sharpies and Cooper's.

There are two ways of looking at the situation. Hawks have to eat, too, and whether they are hunting around your feeder or off in the woods, they are going to catch about the same number of birds each day. Doing it at the feeder may make it a little easier, and feeders may occasionally hold a hawk in an area it would otherwise leave, but by and large this is a natural process. You could just sit back and enjoy it, considering yourself lucky that you have a front row seat to one of nature's more dramatic dances.

Not everyone feels that way, and I don't blame them. Most people do not put up feeders with the intention of attracting hawks. They want sparrows and chickadees and the occasional woodpecker. Birders like watching the birds, and they like the feeling that they are supplementing the birds' diet. Having a hawk blast through, scattering the birds and perhaps carting one off, is not the experience most bird watchers want.

There is not much you can do, legally or ethically, to discourage a hawk from hunting around the feeder. You can't shoot them, and you can't shoot near them. You can't trap them unless you have a special permit, and even then it can't be for the purpose of removing them. Trying to scare the hawk away is pointless. Nine out of ten times you won't even know it is there until it has already made its charge.

What you can do is try to make your feeding station a little safer for the birds that use it. Feeders that are too far from cover present the greatest danger to birds. One of the reasons that birds feed in flocks is that it means more eyes to watch for danger. Most of the time, at least one member of the flock will see the hawk coming and sound the alarm. Birds that have thick cover close by, like heavy evergreen shrubs or a dense brush pile, will make their escape. Birds caught out in the open will be, literally, caught out in the open. A sparrow only seems fast until you see a Cooper's hawk chasing it.

The other thing that you can do is reduce the size of the flock using your feeders. If you have more than one feeder, try taking one or two down for a week or two. Stop putting seeds on the ground. It's a tough decision, because most people do not want to reduce the number of birds coming to the feeder, but if there is nothing to hunt for a few days, the hawk will probably strike its tent and move on, and you can resume feeding.

Ultimately, the only thing you can do when a hawk comes to dinner is wait it out. Most hawks that settle in at feeders do so for two or three months and then they are off again, headed back to the nesting grounds. Feeding birds is rewarding because it brings us into contact with aspects of nature that we don't usually see, and that makes it even more enjoyable.