Hawk Eyed

I Chat With Chat (so you don’t have to) - episode 45

A mature Cooper’s Hawk

When I looked out the window, I saw what I thought was a black plastic bag filled with I-didn’t-want-to-know-what perched on the pool coping.

Then the bag moved.

Perched was the operative word. It was a bird just over a foot tall, but hunched and disheveled looking. When it moved, it walked jerkily like a turkey. Its wings seemed somehow malformed.

It tottered around the pool looking into the water as if trying to figure out how to drink without falling in. It seemed possibly injured or ill, and almost certainly desperate.

Twenty-five years ago I would have dug up a phone book—remember those?— and tried to figure out who to call. Did I look under W for wildlife? Or A for animal?

In 2005, I might have used the newly ubiquitous Google search to find a number online. Then I’d have to hope someone would answer on a Sunday, and if they did, try to describe the bird over the phone: “Well… it’s brown… maybe eighteen inches tall…”

By 2010, a search like: “large brown bird looking lost sitting in my backyard not flying”would likely have produced wildlife rehab pages, birding forums, state wildlife agencies and conflicting advice.

Five years ago, I could have snapped an image on my phone and done a reverse image search that would likely have identified the species, but it wouldn’t tell me if it was injured or what I should do about it.

But this was last Sunday, so what I did was write a prompt describing the situation at length, including the observations that it walked like a turkey, seemed slightly hunch-backed, and when I stepped out into the yard, it just sat there for a long time, until I inched closer and it made a comical hop with wings fluttering onto the hydrangea bush, which promptly collapsed under its weight.

Feeding real time updates and photos into the prompt window, I was able to interact with Chat in a way that would have been impossible in any previous era.

Instead of having to piece together a mosaic of not entirely meshing information, I got this:

CHAT: That’s a juvenile hawk, either a Cooper’s Hawk or a red-shouldered hawk, and it’s not injured or ill, unless you consider being an adolescent a malady.

When a young hawk leaves the nest, it is not suddenly an accomplished hunter.

For the first few weeks, fledglings spend astonishing amounts of time simply sitting. To us it can look worrisome.

“Is it sick?”

“Is something wrong?”

Often the answer is simply:

“No. It’s seventeen years old.”

They perch for hours because they’re constantly absorbing information. Every squirrel, every robin, every rustling leaf is part of an education. Sitting above them in the mature trees I see in your pictures, are their parents - helicopter parents who can actually fly.

At first they drop food. Then they drop less food. Then they call from nearby trees as if saying, “You know… there are perfectly good chipmunks down there.”

This is all normal.

Nobody is born knowing how to be a hawk.

It’s a reminder that even one of nature’s most formidable predators begins life looking a little rumpled, a little unsure of itself, spending afternoons perched by a cucumber trellis while its parents call from somewhere beyond the maple. It has the wings, talons, and magnificent eyesight of a hawk, but it’s still figuring out how to be one. And for a few weeks this summer, your backyard is a classroom.

Chat estimated this bird was hatched in early June, so just a few weeks old, and that it would be a hawk trainee for another 4-6 weeks. And even then its ability to do the high-speed, hairpin maneuvers required for successfully bringing down a robin, say, would be less than the near-perfection required for long-term survival.

Its biggest threats are starvation and navigational miscalculations—like flying at high speed into tree branches or windows.

Chat cautioned that the chances this fledgling would see its first birthday were “notoriously brutal” with a one-year mortality rate of 70-80 percent.

The model told me I might be boosting the odds in my fledgling’s favor by providing the perfect field school—a fenced yard filled with squirrels, bugs and songbirds and leafy places to hide from foxes and other raptors. I’d also filled a birdbath with clean water and placed it near the edge of the pool for safe sipping.

Usually I’m on guard against Chat’s famous tendency to tell me what I want to hear.

But the last bit, about giving a bird an edge? I’ll take that as gospel.