When Animals Attack— Plastic

Ever wonder if those plastic owls that are supposed to scare birds away from buildings actually work?

Chunk and I saw a test of this Batesian mimicry strategy on an evening walk this week.

The Cooper's Hawk on the fence (just left of the small tree in the photo) screams at the plastic owl, attached to the fence near the gate (right of the tree). The apathetic owl does not respond. The hawk screams again, from the fence and then from above in a large oak. The owl, unflappable as always, is silent. 

Enraged, the hawk attacks! At this point, Chunk wants a piece of the action, and yanks the leash so hard, my camera sails into the street—note the blurry photo. With the dog barking hysterically and me running after the camera, the hawk flip-flops away. Serene on his throne, the plastic owl remains.

The next morning I had breakfast out on the patio with my camera (it survived the crash). I noticed a flurry of bird calls. The crows were crowing, the jays were jaying, and the grackles were grackling. And no wonder! A Cooper's Hawk—perhaps the same one—was perched on the girder of the nearby water tower. 

The crows gave him the same treatment he had given the owl the evening before, but Cooper's was not so cool-headed.

He dashed away after his tormentors, but they had a pretty good lead. The neighborhood was quiet again.

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Cooper's Hawk in Library

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      Chunk

Cooper's Hawk in the Library

This young Cooper's Hawk is jarringly out of place. Photo by m_barje

After hearing the news stories that a juvenile Cooper's Hawk somehow got trapped in the main reading room of the Library of Congress, my mom and I had this conversation:
Mom:   Did you hear about the Cooper's Hawk that's in the Library of Congress?
Me:      Yes, I did. I hope they get it out soon. It can't last long in there.
Mom:   Of course you're happy about that--you don't like Cooper's Hawks.
Me:      Yes, I do actually.
Mom:   They eat little birds don't they?
Me:      Well, a hawk's gotta eat something.
Mom:   Anne, I'm surprised at you. I thought you liked little birds!
Me:      I do.
Mom:   Well, can't he learn to eat something else?
Me:      I don't think so.
Mom:   He learned enough to go to the library.
Me:      Yes, he did.
Mom:   And he picked a good library.
Me:      Yes he did.
Mom:   I tell you, there's a children's book in it if he lives.
Me:      Hmmm…at least a blog post.

Searching through Flickr, I found the above photo of another juvenile Cooper's that blundered into a building. Fortunately, this one eventually followed the cat out the same door it entered. I noticed that well-known blogger Birdchick left a comment on the Library Congress's first blog post about the hawk. She mentions that when she worked with a raptor center, she once rescued a Cooper's from a batting cage.
I'm not a bird rehabber, but I had a similar experience. I was just out for a walk with my best buddy, Rosie, in the campus of a nearby college. We took the path past the track and ball field, when I saw a Cooper's Hawk frantically trying to get out of the nylon-net batting cage. I hurried home and put Rosie inside, then headed back.
More than once I'd freed Mourning Doves from these batting cages, and I figured I could help the hawk, though his size would make it more of a challenge. I lifted the netting as high as I could, but it was surprisingly heavy and hard to lift over my head for very long. The panicked hawk would come nowhere near the opening with me there. There was a woman running the track at the time, so I trotted over to ask for her help. Two of us could hold up the net from the corners, leaving a wide open space, I explained. She was afraid of birds, she said, and left immediately.
Finally I found two chairs left by baseball fans and used them to prop the net up creating a low but wide opening. The hawk was frantically trying to get out of the top of the net so I withdrew. When I checked an hour later, the hawk was gone.

Dome of the Main Reading Room of the Library of
Congress, where the hawk is trapped. Photo by Photo Phiend

As I post this, the Cooper's Hawk has now been in the LOC for almost 7 days, hanging out just below the "Mural of Human Understanding," seen on the left in a photo by Photo Phiend. We bloggers have had some fun with this story, but the bird's situation is serious. She-- they determined that she's a female--managed to steal some food from the trap set by the Virginia Raptor Conservancy team, but didn't spring the mechanism. Check the latest tweets about the LOC's hawk here.