Hawked

The following may or may not be fiction, or a figment of the authors imagination.

So last night I'm doing my evening drinker chores for the pigeons, when I get to the brown loft I find a dead half eaten pigeon on the floor, a bunch of terrified pigeons, and a cooper hawk inside the loft. Cooper hawks are just crazy, a week ago I was outside and one shot out of the woods, flew right over my head, then continued towards the pigeon lofts. On that occasion I hooped and hollered and the hawk flew back into the woods.

In the past when there is a cooper hawk in the loft they usually go down on the floor and try to hide and will sometimes lay on their back with their feet/claws out for protection. This time however the cooper went up high, near my head, so I retreated from the loft and went to get a pair of gloves. I returned with a pair of leather gloves and a headlight as it was dark. The LED headlight has two operating modes, a single red LED or two bright white LED's, I went with the single low light red LED. With the leather gloves I was able to safely capture the hawk and grasp it by the legs. I placed the hawk into a portable pigeon crate and put the crate in the back seat of my car.

I know that some people kill hawks, and I was told by a TWRA officer who visited the farm that it was OK to kill a hawk if it was killing our chickens or pigeons, but I never do. I look at it this way, the hawk is just being a hawk, I've got a bunch of gorgeous pigeons flying about, so in a way I'm attracting the hawks. The only way I know to eliminate the hawk problem is to lock up my birds, which is not really fair to the birds as they love to fly and that's what they do. I hate to lose pigeons to hawks, I wish that the hawks would cull the flock for me, to take the slow birds, the weak birds, the ones that are not too smart, but that is not what happens. Hawks are just as likely, perhaps more likely, to take the best pigeons. I think the reason is that the best pigeons are the most healthy, like to fly more, spend more time outside, and are perhaps more confident.

I've seen some wild pigeons that are very smart, they approach the loft very high, then just sort of spiral descend almost straight down to the loft and go in. The homing pigeons on the other hand will approach low as a large group and fly many low altitude laps around the loft before finally settling on the loft and then going inside. I can't blame a hungry hawk who watches this from the woods for going after the homing pigeons.

There is one good thing though about the cooper hawks, when they get a pigeon they get "a" pigeon, as in just one. Some other predators such as weasels I've heard will get into a loft and kill every single bird.

So, the hawk is in the crate in the back seat of my car. I decided that I would take the hawk and release it in the morning on my way to work. The idea is to relocate the hawk so that this hawk will not come back and kill any more of my animals. I start driving to work and a funny thing happens. The hawk got out of the crate and was jumping around in the back of the car while I was driving. Apparently I had not securely latched the top door on the crate and the hawk bumped it just right and it opened and the hawk got out. Hawks look very mean, kind of scary, with a sharp beak and menacing eye. I was afraid that the hawk might come in the front seat, get up in my face or something. So I put my hat on, talked to the bird and kept one hand up for protection. The hawk stayed in the back seat and remained relatively calm. I drove a couple more miles to a good release spot and pulled the car over, opened the windows, and got out. About 30 seconds later the hawk flew out the window and headed straight for some woods and disappeared. The cooper hawk has amazing camoflage, when it gets near the woods it literally disappears.

I then got back in the car, closed the windows, and continued to work. Again, this may or may not have actually happened.

I have thought about ways to keep cooper hawks out of pigeon lofts. The coopers are not very big and I think they can fit through just about any pigeon sized opening. Pigeons however are capable of flying straight up. Perhaps it would be possible to make a tall structure where the pigeons entered at the bottom, flew straight up, and then entered the loft. I may try this someday.