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DaRk AnGel : Why Home : July 2006 : When The Hawks Quit Crying

When The Hawks Quit Crying

At first the thrill of having nesting Sharp Shinned Hawks 150 feet away was great. Little did I think about them as residents, or the repercussions of their time here.

I have spent weeks trying to get a good picture of one. Many pictures others consider good, I do not. I know what I want and am looking for. So every time the fledglings cried I tried to get as close as I could to get that one shot.

Once I was 100 feet away from one as it ate something on the ground. Another time I was 50 feet away from one on a limb as it feasted on a Blue Jay brought to it by one of the parents. The parents would hunt and retrieve each something to eat then go and hunt for the next.

In the beginning there were four babies. And when they are out and about they cry to each other. It sounds like almost a hoarse shrill whistle. Short blasts. One from one tree, one from another a block away and one elsewhere. All day long that calling went on. For me it was an indication where they were and how I might find one. For the other birds it was like fingernails on a chalk board. All day long they edgily hurried in to eat and then hide.

Number four was not very lucky. That crying got him in trouble early on. It was a time I did not have my camera with me, but one I would have never caught even if I did. It was over in seconds. In one of the pines in the yard behind mine he sat on a branch watching my feeders. I was out picking tomatoes and happened to just look up as he was knocked off of the branch. The impact that knocked him off also killed him. An adult Red Tailed Hawk needed food for its own nestlings. What he hit the smaller bird with were talons that would shred a mans face. The Red Tailed quickly scooped up the dead baby and was gone.

As the babies grew and spent time around here they needed more and more to eat. Things began to disappear. Blue Jays, Black Birds, Crows, Robins, Brown Thrashers, Brown Headed Cowbirds have not been around for months. Skinks, lizards and snakes are rare now. And an area once over run with squirrels has so very few left. I saw one in the neighborhood today. What once was a nuisance due to their numbers are now missed.

Hawks rarely eat anything they do not kill. And they eat and kill anything that they physically can. With the absence of some of the birds listed above there have been obvious other abundances.

My fig tree is usually full of the missing birds eating the fruit. This year I have not seen one fig harmed by a bird. With so many ripening, and people around here sick of them, they fall to the ground. The sweet meat of the figs attracts possums at night. You never see them but as I passed a tree the other night with Chicken Bentley all of a sudden I was hissed at. Of course it scared Bentley more than it did me.

And the rats and mice are now coming in to eat on the remains of the figs. One even brazen enough to run several runs today in the daylight. I put out traps for him and have trapped others in the last week.

Then the Cicadas. Talk about being overrun. The noise is almost deafening at times there are so many of them. At night they cover the lights outside and the concrete like a blanket. They breed and live with no predators about.

Insects, crickets, large caterpillars, large bugs have no one to control their numbers. And smaller insects like flies are free to breed and be nuisances since even the birds that dine on them spend most of the time in the branches of trees.

Hawks are shrewd hunters. They do not waste their time on small prey. As they grow the meal has to be worth the energy expended on the attack. And they are not always successful. It can take many attacks to get one meal. A tit mouse or a cardinal is barely a meal to a baby hawk, much less four in the nest. Even though they flee and are afraid, the hawks rarely go after them.

So this is the year of the hawks.

Today there was silence. No cries from tree to tree. It was as if a switch were thrown and life changed. They hawks are still here. I saw them several times. But they have matured. They changed from child to young adult. Something clicked and realized that it is easier to kill something when it is not aware of your presence. Mom and Dad come with one large meal in the evenings and that will stop very soon. And in time these three will separate.

The silence means is they have become deadlier.. They have to be.

As in life one thing changes and impacts so much around and touching it. It was nice to see the hawks. It was a great experience for me.

But I miss the balance that was imparted by their presence.

I will take the Jays over the Cicadas any day!