hawk scares all birds away, what to do?

Pelletory eagles are just full of tricks. I live on a long point out that justs out into the lake myself. One of the things a eagle will do regularly is come up the lake about 30 ft off the water then sweep up onto the point and barely skim the tree tops hoping I am sure to catch either a bunch of birds are ducks out in the open on the other side of the point. Many times they seem to know the eagle is coming and there is nothing that will send them into hiding below docks faster. We have another bird that does eactly what the eagle does on my point but it has two engine and goes by the name of Warthog. They all nest up at Whiteman AF base. I have stood on the top of the point and looked down on them several times. But they do not scare the ducks, although they make the humans about ready to go hide under something at times.

Maybe we should have adopted the duck as our national bird?

Ozarkian... Great story (I used to live in Camdenton, BTW... so I know that neck of the woods.)
Quick hawk story: This weekend, I'd enjoyed birdwatching in one of my favorite places... my backyard... when suddenly there was NOTHING. I'd gone from having three kinds of woodpeckers, finches, robins, bluebirds and bluejays, cardinals, warblers, nuthatches... you get the idea to complete silence. I knew there must be a hawk nearby ... so I got my binoculars and went searching... sure enough, a hawk in a big tree at the edge of my yard. But I couldn't tell what kind so I tried to sneak closer. In my quest, I got too near a poor dove which couldn't hide from the hawk and stay quiet — the mourning dove took off and in a split second, so did the hawk. I saw feathers come down but the hawk didn't have the dove in his grip.
Needless to say, I felt TERRIBLE. I know it's the natural order of things and all but I couldn't help but feel like an accessory to murder. From now on, if a hawk comes near, I'll stay as quiet as the birds I so enjoy feeding and won't stir again until they do.

Dove killer.

Sorry couldn't help myself. Hawk has to eat something and that's just the way it goes.

Not funny.
I realize he's gotta eat. He can eat mice. Squirrels even.

We have Red Hawks around here and doves seem to be one of their favorites. Once in a while I see a hawk dive bomb my bird feeder and it only happens when doves are around. We also have bald eagles that have become so common they're fighting each other over territory. There was an incident last spring where some tourist were watching a couple of bald eagles play with each other. Well that wasn't what was going on. One bird broke the other birds wing and the injury bird dropped to the ground somewhere around the horrified tourist. They grabbed the eagle and he ended up in a rehab place. Naturel is not all that nice.

I have hawks around also. I feed the wild birds and as stated in the posts they do go into hiding. I have Hollie trees around the feeding area which helps. I also have a Yellow fronted Amazon that I take outside with me daily in the summer. We have to be very vigilant as twice we were out there and a hawk flew right over our heads landed on a low broken branch 20 feet away and just stared. I had Larita in her travel cage on the table so I stood in front of it staring back at him trying to schoot him away but he just stared. I didn't want to make too much noise as my 8 pound cat was laying in a bunch of monkey grass at the base of that tree. What amazes me is when Larita and I are out there she will sometimes make a low cooing sound(warning!)and I look for a long time before I spot him way up......a tiny speck in the sky.......Needless to say when we are out I never have her on my shoulder anymore(Hawks will pluck the pets right off there). I hold her close to my body. If I am working in the garden she is in her travel cage (nice size one)but I keep a good eye out anyway. If he is hungry enough he probably could lift that cage and her away. The only other bird she gives a warning coo for is a vulture,but even though it is a warning coo it does sound a bit different. Her eyesight is amazing.

Judy

Right now we got a lot of Bald Eagles and a few Golden. DO NOT leave your pets outside if you cherish them with Eagles and hawks. Here on the banks of Lake of the Ozarks they are after either fish,ducks are gulls most of the time. But they are opertunist. They have taken a few dogs about the size of a minuture poodle so a 8 lb cat would be just one claw full and no problem to carry aloft. Some hawks might be able to take a 8 lb cat as well. If they cant take it aloft they will kill it right there when they strike. They take squirrels all the time but they prefer birds.

I have seen the hawks with squirrels also. One dropped a squirrel not 5 feet from me as he was flying across through the trees. I NEVER leave my bird unattended outside but my cat does go in and out at will even though I do cherish her. She was a feral kitten when she came to me and she goes bananas if I confine her inside. Now that she is getting older she doesn't go outside so much. Mostly just when I am out there. Warning understood, thanks!
I have not seen an Eagle in town here but they are around. On Quantico Marine base there are a lot as It is next to a lake. My DH works there and he sees them raid squirrels nests all the time. They are such beautiful creatures.

We had a red hawk go after a ladys small dog. Can remember which one it was but it was in the 7-10 lbs range. Had a leash on so the bird was trying to take the dog away while the lady beat him with a purse. The thing there is it's illegal to hit a hawk. What to do? They let her slide. Sort of funny but when my dogs were puppies I watched them like a "hawk".

Sad but so funny to picture in my head.

Hit it anyway.

I have a little *lb. miniature pinscher and I have had hawks, a Golden Eagle and our Barred Owl come in pretty close to check it out when I am walking him on his leash. It is scary!

This message was edited Jan 27, 2008 1:52 PM

In some states you have a right to defend your property. It is that way in Missouri. There would be no fine for killing the bird to defend your dog. But it would have to be an attack. Just going out and shooting one down because it is flying around up there will get you in trouble.

Excuse me, we are not allowed to discuss killing or harming birds at all on this forum.

Please read the Important Rules on the Sticky near the top of the forum page.

Thank You.

I would just stay away from having really small dog and cats. The turkey vultures always make me wonder because they show up in numbers and circle. They don't hunt live stuff I don't think but 5 of those guys would be hard to handle if they went after you.

I had a turkey go after me once and he wanted to brawl. Giant angry rooster. I don't know what I did to make him mad but he was eye balling me then came right after me, One day he was looking in my back window and I swear he was trying to get me to go outside. ???? He became a pest and some people were worried about their kids so they started letting their dogs loose on the turkey and he moved on. I didn't have kids at the time so I thought he was funny. Friends would come over and I would tell him he was almost a pet and very friendly. LOL> "go pet him." LOL. It's a young guy thing. "Come on it won't hurt you". Had a friend fool with an alligator and two more came up behind him. It was the funniest thing when we said look behind you.

Pelletory.............Thanks for the reminder though I really wasn't advocating hurting the hawk , just saving a dog. I will be more careful in my choice of words from now on.

I realize you weren't advocating it. :-)

A hawk stopped by to have a snack at our feeder. The sparrows are VERY spooked now - hopping from bush to bush very quickly. What an amazing animal! Sad that my birds are gone though but the experince was worth it.

I was vising on the back patio with two friends vising from another part of Las Vegas but nearby.
We were just talking away when one of my visitors asked me if I had seen the "Red Hawk" in my tree. I said yes, I saw it yesterday getting water from the waterfall on the KOI pond. She stated, "he probably was not getting water, but fish". We walked over to the KOI pond and I do think a few of the smaller KOI are gone The bigger KOI are to large but they have babies every year and it appeared several of them were gone. He stayed in the tree high up for several hours and then left. Unfortunately, he now knows they are there so he will be back A community next door had to put wire over their KOI ponds to keep the predators out. I had a large tree that hid the pond but the Las Vegas high winds, in Florida they call them hurricanes, blew it down. LOL. I couldn't find a picture of the KOI pond. I am taking a course next week at Apple on i photo. Hope it helps.LOL. Have a great gardening week. We are going to be in the 70's all week.

I too have a sparrow hawk. It flys in and sits on top of the bird feeder and waits. Also sits in my willow tree at the lower end of property. One day recently I was out filling the feeders and it dive bombed toward me but veered off and down behind a rose bush to snatch a bird in hiding. However, it missed the bird and flew off. I have a row of evergreen trees that the birds hide in. A few days later the hawk was sitting in the willow and two very large crows flew in and landed one on each side of the hawk - the hawk flew off - haven't seen it since but I know it will be back so for now my feeders are down.

I've had to move my feeders practically into a row of shrubs and throw seed under them to help the little ones feel a little safer. I see that my neighbor a few doors down has moved her feeders up onto her deck where there is tree cover and nearby shrubs. It looks a bit awkward in both of our yards, but it seems to work.

I have crows in my neighborhood, so they police the sky and keep the hawks away. I have pigeons so I am always looking out for them. If one does slip pass the crows, I try to immatate the sound that they make. It tricks them into thinking that another hawk already resides in the talls trees around my house and they will leave.

I realize this is an ancient thread, but it's this thread that enabled me to find this interesting and knowledgable community. I've been at my current residence for 1 1/2 years and finally get birds to my backyard. However, this happened last year at about the same time. The birds just vanish. I went out to my back porch yesterday and scanned the trees in my yard and sure enough, there was a Sharp-shinned Hawk sitting there. I did plant a couple rows of bushes in the spring but it's going to take at least another year or more for them to provide much cover. After reading the last couple posts, I'm kindof wondering if a couple crow decoys would help deter the hawks.

I did get a shot of a Cooper's in my yard early in the spring, just after he'd nailed a Grackle

A good thread to have bumped up. :)

I'd say until this fall, I really disliked hawks with a passion. Well, any that came in my yard. And usually it was a Cooper's that was the culprit in taking our little birds. I'd want to cry every time I saw a pile of Junco feathers. The hawk even had the audacity to eat one on my front porch.

I hope I didn't mention it somewhere else on the forum, but we had an interesting happening early this fall. We started seeing a squirrel around and knowing how difficult it would be to keep it away from our feeder set-up, we put up one of those twirly things that holds corn cobs. It was placed on the opposite side of the house. We knew something was eating it as the corn was disappearing.

One morning, a child was watching out that window and saw a rat on the twirly thing. Yuck! Out of nowhere, a Cooper's swooped down and took the rat. I asked other birders because we thought Cooper's only ate birds and learned that some of the younger ones will go after rodents because they are not skilled enough for birds yet and also that just like anything else, if an opportunity presents itself, it will take it. Little did we realize our squirrel diversion was going to turn into a rat trap!

We rarely see rabbits or squirrels due to our open yard, but we also have other raptors close by that just might be keeping them in check. Lately, when it seems the birds disappear out of the blue, I am guessing a hawk is present. I will look out all the windows to see if I could find one and just wait. Most often the birds do come back. And as much as I enjoy our Juncos, I am beginning to appreciate the hawks a little more knowing that they will take care of the things I consider pests.

mnshutterbug, We had a Cooper's right outside our dining room window eating supper when we were. The color of the feathers could have been a type of blackbird. It was an interesting experience for us as it never flew off until it was done.

Oh thank you so much for posting this!!! I have been trying to identify the hawk that swooped in and saved my backyard from (literally) 100+ black birds! I have never had a problem with blackbirds and found it quite frightening watching my yard turn black and there were SO MANYof them! I know I have a red tail hawk as well, my dog is 25lbs but I still take him out with a thick harness and short leash.

Always remember if you have small pets that it is your job to protect them and you CAN NOT harm a bird of prey for doing what comes natural to it... this is why my 3.5lb dog is indoor trained bc the risk of her getting taken leash and all is too high and in most pet related cases the pet doesn’t die frombejng eaten but from being dropped.

On the subject of hawk attacks the red tail is federally protected so regardless of its instincts you can not and should not harm it, respect them and understand they are only trying to survive. If you must put up a scarecrow!

Bird watching is a joy but we can not interfere with nature, I think humans have done that enough and it isn’t exactly pretty. I appreciate every one of you and your respect for nature, it’s rare and beautiful.

❤️❤️❤️

Nothing!