Male Cooper's Hawk Breaks Female Martin's Wing

[Steve Kroenke]

Male Cooper?s Hawk Breaks Female Martin?s Wing

The Accipiters are growing bolder in their hunting of martins in our colonies and I am sometimes failing in my attempts to keep them at bay. Yesterday, March 23, 2006, a most bothersome male Cooper?s hawk attacked a large group of martins at my colony during cold windy weather. The martins were slow to react as the hawk came through. I could see him transform into a hunter as his wing tips narrowed and turned back and his body profile became slender. He then beat his wings strongly, accelerated like a feathered cheetah and snagged a female martin about 100 feet from my colony. I charged the hawk and he dropped the screaming martin. But he continued to circle and wanted his prize! I finally chased him off.

Unfortunately, the female martin is injured and it appears her left wing is broken, the worst kind of injury for an aerial insectivore. I believe it is most difficult to rehabilitate birds like martins which feed exclusively on flying insects. She is in good health, but I am doubtful she will make it. If anyone on this Forum has had success with rehabilitating a martin with a broken wing, I would appreciate your comments.

This male Cooper?s hawk is a mature one and has a grayish back, dark crown and rusty barred breast feathers. He is not afraid of me and this morning showed exactly that. At around 6:10 am he was sitting on one of Bob?s gourd crossbars and staring intently at a nearby Trio castle. He was so still that several martins which left during the very cold morning air simply failed to observe him and circled around and returned to their gourds! I couldn?t believe it! They were not more than 20 feet from him and his profile was stiff and slender. Hawks may do this to reduce the chances that prey will notice them. I thought any second he would try for one, but he ignored these martins. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted and is apparently using this hunting strategy in the mornings. I assumed he was waiting for a martin to appear in the entrance hole of the castle and then he would attack. I chased the hawk away.

Hopefully this Cooper?s hawk is a migrant and will leave soon. If he is a resident, then his mate may be incubating eggs. Male Cooper?s hawks hunt for their mates while they incubate the eggs and brood the young. The male is the primary hunter for the family though the female will participate later in the nesting season and after the young leave the nest. We had this situation occur in 2005 when both a male and female Cooper?s hawk preyed extensively on the martin fledglings from early June through late July.

After the Cooper?s hawk had injured the female martin, about 30 minutes later a merlin made a blistering attack on a small flock of cowbirds south of my martin colony. The hunter and hunted were about 200 feet up. This merlin was not intimidated by their tight flocking behavior and penetrated their ?defense?. The cowbirds literally exploded in all directions and the merlin concentrated on a single one which tried to dive to the safety of a thicket. I couldn?t see the final outcome, but the merlin was right on the cowbird?s tail as both disappeared toward the ground.

Accipiter hawks and merlins are the major threats to our martin colonies and it will get worse in April when many of these raptors migrate through this area as they head north. We don?t have to worry about starlings or house sparrows competing with martins; we have to worry about predators eating them. This is a lot worse in our situation.

Steve

[Davlyn]

Hello Steve,
Sorry to hear about the female martin hope she will be okay. Yes those
hawks are very sneaky, I have a cooper coming around here a few
times a day not sure if its a male are a female, wish you the best of luck
this year with those predators.

[John Atteberry]

Hello Steve,
Sorry to hear of your hawk attack yesterday and would you beleive I had a cooper's hawk sitting on my gourd rack on the decoy! This happened when I was home and just went inside to get a drink about 6:45 A.M.. Then I heard the martins scream and that is when I saw the hawk on the rack and I chased the hawk off! But after about 20 minutes the martins came back! So I think they are getting used to these attacks! They are coming back and staying around longer everyday! I'm really sorry to hear of the female martin and wished that I knew someone or some re-hab place but I never had to look! I wish you luck with these hawks and do wish they move on! Thanks John!

[TreeGreenwood]

Steve, "REHABILITATION AND CONSERVATION OF CHIMNEY SWIFTS (Chaetura pelagica)" http://www.chimneyswifts.org/page3.html is supposed to be a great rehab' book for obligate aerial insectivors even though its focus is swifts. The diet developed by the Kyles and other TX rehab'ers is the standard for rehab'ers all over the country and probably the world. Are there even any other rehab' books for swallows or swifts in print? You can download a copy at http://home.austin.rr.com/dwa/Rehab%20a ... 2004.1.pdf. A $10 donation is requested.

Page 30 of the book gives the prognosis for a Chimney Swift with a broken wing. Unfortunately, the advice for an injured Martin and other Swallow would probably be the same. I don't know of a single case of successful rehabilitation of a swallow or swift with a broken wing. Sorry.

[Steve Kroenke]

Thanks for the comments. The martin is still "eager" to fly but I don't believe she ever do it again. I agree with you, Tree, the chances for a long wing aerial insectivore to become fully functional again is very remote. I will continue to feed her and see what happens. I will check out the website. She may have some internal injuries and these may eventually "do her in".

John/April,

The male Cooper's hawk has not returned so perhaps he was a migrant and has headed north. I certainly hope so. John, as the martin season progresses the martins have to settle down and just take their chances with the hawks. The martins need to attract mates, build nests and raise their families. However, the hawks can still create temporary "hawk fright" behavior on and off during the nesting season.

The martins are having a, so far, hawk free day!

Seve

[Guest]

I have already lost one martin and a carinal to a coppers. They are not very high on my like list. I lost so many homing pigeons last year to coppers I sold out. Every time I would let my pigeons out I'd lose one or the hawks would chase them all over the place.

[Steve Kroenke]

Jeff,

Cooper?s hawks are becoming more of an issue for martin colonies located throughout the United States and Canada. These hawks, including sharp-shinned hawks, are learning to associate martin housing with food just like they have learned to predate bird feeding stations. And Cooper?s hawks are growing in population in many areas and nesting in urban/suburban locations. I found where they even nested on the campus of the University of Miami in sub-tropical Florida! Here is a link to an article that identifies a city in Wisconsin that claims to have the largest number of breeding pairs of urban Cooper?s hawks:

http://www.pcgazette.com/outdoors/feb00/waw2-25.htm

Cooper?s hawks have a ?love or rather feast affair? for pigeons of all kinds. The big female Cooper?s will readily take the city pigeons (rock doves) and I have watched them hunt them at my old home in Tallahassee, Florida. This predilection for pigeon meat may have a historical root. The extinct passenger pigeon was a favorite prey item of Cooper?s hawks so pigeons of any kind will be pursued and eaten. Cooper?s preyed on passenger pigeons for possibly thousands of years and therefore the desire for pigeon meat may even be genetically coded in these Accipiters? genes!

Good luck with your martins this year.

Steve

[Steve Kroenke]

Here's an update on the injured martin. The female martin died. I believe she must have sustained some internal injuries in addition to the broken wing. I believe she was one of the many migrants or newcomers that had just arrived.

The male Cooper's hawk may have left, but he probably caught numerous martins over the last week when our weather was cold and windy. The martins were less vigilant and often fed close to the ground. Other martins lined up on barbed wires in an attempt to capture insects near the ground. These martins would have been easy prey for any
Accipiter or merlin.

Steve

[loco for purple]

Steve,

I"m not surpised by the outcome.Last year a male coopers caught a dove behind my property.I don't now why but I ran out to save the dove and the coopers droped the dove. The dove was probably in the hawks talons not more than ten seconds,and the damage was extensive.It was bleeding profusely when I picked it up it was in shock.I left it on my picnic table, and ten min. later it slowly flew off.I know it did't make it.I should have left it for the hawk .The hawk has to eat like everybody else,but it's just hard for me to see I guess..I also visited a rehab center and they had a coppers hawk.I believeit had flown into a window and broken a wing acording to the staff.To make a long story short ,I was able to touch its talons.They are extremely sharp, like little knives.I don't know how any bird survives being caught by one of these hawks.

[Steve Kroenke]

Loco for Purple,

You are correct about the sharp talons of the Accipiters. These hawks kill their prey with a viselike grip from their talons while falcons often use their beaks to dispatch prey.

I have seen martins escape from the clutches of sharp-shinned hawks, but rarely from the larger Cooper's. I once saw a male Cooper's hawk grab a female martin, which had bolted from her nest, by her tail feathers. As both hawk and martin fluttered to the ground, the martin twisted back and forth and escaped, minus all her tail feathers! She looked most peculiar but she was still able to raise her young. I had several bob-tailed martins in my colony; all the result of the Cooper's hawk grabbing the martin from tail end and getting only the feathers.

Steve

[Guest]

Sorry to hear about your martin Steve, sound like they have been getting a work out by the accipiters. For future reference to other people, I think that unless you are 100% sure on how to rehibilitate a bird or have access to a wildlife rehibilitation facility you shouldn't chase off a hawk that has caught a bird. I know for most people here it's hard to not do so but when a bird is caught by a hawk after some struggling their body goes into shock from having multiple punture wounds from the talons and to scare off the hawk and take the bird in and not know how to nurse it back to health is unfair because of the suffering. If the hawk would be left alone the bird would have died and that's the end. After the initial attack and struggle their body goes into shock and they don't feel anything, the same goes for us when we are seriously injured, and to not know how to keep a bird in good health during its recovery is unfair, as people mentioned before they were sure the bird died shortly after it flew away from them (in extreme pain). Just a little advice for those new to this life and death game.

Blake
WA

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey Blake,

Good to see you posting on the Forum again!

I generally agree with you. Up to this attack, I had been successful in preventing direct contact between Accipiters and martins in our colonies, so my natural instinct was to try to intervene and frighten the Cooper's away. It was a "gut reaction" that most folks would probably have if one of "their" martins was caught by a hawk. I guess we martin landlords tend to be more sympathetic to "our" martins rather than other bird species when these others are captured by hawks. Yes, in most cases where a bird has been caught by a hawk, the prey is usually severely wounded, particularly smaller birds and the chances of survival if it escapes are probably slim. So, you are correct and we should try not to actually break up a "predatory union" between an Accipiter and its prey under most circumstances. I don't know if I can always do that when martins are involved, but I do generally agree with the premise.

Thanks for your insightful response.

Steve

[Dick Sherry]

Steve, back around summer of 1996, a severe thunderstorm went over the downtown area during the night and injured and killed a lot of martins at the big roost at an autobank. I believe there were 5 or 6 that had broken wings, and we took them to the Tulsa Zoo and their vet set the wings. A friend cared for them for several weeks and even built a flight cage for them to exercise in once the wing bones had healed. As I recall, all but one or two got back into the air eventually, but it was a long process. The odds are really stacked against martins, other swallows and swifts, if they break a wing. Hope this doesn't happen again to your birds.

[Carlton]

I am 58 years old and have been an avid birdwatcher most of my life. I lived in both rural and suburban areas in MD and VA and never even saw a Coopers Hawk until about 15 years ago. Now they seem to be EVERYWHERE including attacking birds at my feeder. I HOPE that the one in my neighborhood leaves before my martins return to the neighborhood.