The Cooper Hawks 



astir. It is thus, no doubt, that it has learned to dance attendance upon 

 deer or cougar thrusting through the brush. 



One never gets a clearer insight into the possibilities of cruel rapacity 

 than when a Cooper Hawk comes dashing up into a thicket where you have 

 been ogling Sparrows, and baffled of his victim, stands for a moment pant- 

 ing in his rage, and flashing malevolence from a blood-red eye. It is as 

 though an emissary of the nether world had broken from cover; and one 

 feels all the virtue of a just cause in putting him to death. 



Birds form eighty per cent of Cooper Hawk's food, and young chick- 

 ens are counted in whenever occasion offers. Game birds are often cap- 

 tured, for the Cooper Hawk is a conscienceless brigand; but when the 

 birds are scarce he descends to rabbits, squirrels, mice, grasshoppers, 

 crickets, and similar small quarry. 



So quick, as well as stealthy, is the bird in action that in nine cases 

 out of ten it is the Cooper Hawk who gets the bird, and the unwary Buteo 

 who gets the shot. His lurking presence contributes more than any other 

 factor to the deadly hawk-fear which occupies the background of the bird 

 psychology. When he has recently shown himself, the bird world gets 

 panicky like a spirited horse. After that, every flying shape is a hawk and 

 the signal for a scramble to shelter. I shall never forget how a company 

 of ducks, chiefly Cinnamon Teals, on Laguna Blanca, were thrown into the 

 wildest confusion by the sudden arrival of a Great Blue Heron. "My! 

 What a fright you gave me," gabbled a dozen ducks, as they checked their 

 mad effort and settled back to puddling. A moment later the Cooper 

 Hawk did appear, and a watchful Killdeer, who saw him first, set up a 

 sharp tee dee dee, which put the ducks to rout and nearly upset the heron. 

 The ducks, forty of them, now dashed into the nearest clump of tules, 

 and the heron, seeing that the fishing was spoiled anyhow, took himself 

 off grumbling. 



It is both amusing and amazing that our Dr. Cooper, writing on Cali- 

 fornian ornithology, could have said of the Cooper Hawk: 1 "Its nest and 

 eggs have not yet been described." It is, perhaps, not less amazing that 

 Dr. Baird, who edited the Cooper manuscript in 1870, should not have 

 been able to correct him. Whatever may have been the cause of this early 

 oversight, the nesting of the Cooper Hawk is a commonplace of to-day. 



Having chosen a nesting site, the Cooper Hawk becomes quite at- 

 tached to the locality; and if undisturbed will return year after year. 

 He haunts the vicinity like an unquiet ghost, and may be heard oftener 

 than seen, voicing his unrest in querulous notes, kek, kek, kek, kek, kek, 

 kek, kek, kek. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of caution and he 

 throws a few circles in the open, swapping confidences, as it were, with 



Geological Survey of California, Vol. I., Ornithology, p. 465. 

 1666 



