Ok here goes. I am a novice birdwatcher but do observe them and take not of how many I see, especially birds of prey.

So my office looks out into the old rec yard of the Mt Vernon jail. It is about 50 x 50. ft two stories with a couple sapling in it. I had noticed a robin had begun nesting in a sapling. It quickly chose another spot because it was continually getting spooked by our presence.
But today I looked out the window and watched closely two robins systematically working the yard for what I thought were insects. One Robin was a super fat one and the other a nice looking one as well.

I watched for about 3 minutes and went about my work. I came back to the office about an hour later and was checking to see if the two robin were still in the yard......well one was. And he or she was in the claws of a hawk being eaten. Feathers all over the place, and only some entrails and a beak on the ground.

Hawk or falcon noticed me and i ducked out of site, super excited about what I had just seen. I slowly rose over the windowsill and tried to keep watching. Well, Mr Falcon saw me once again and after about a 5 second staredown at 25 ft he flew up and out, with the mostly eaten carcass. Too cool. Kinda like catchin a steelhead.

Nature is all around. Skagit river close by, and after consulting a game book I am guessing a Kestrel. Any expert birdwatchers out there? It was a smaller sized hawk/falcon with a brown white mottled back.

It also had piercing eyes that to me looked like a terminator. I can still remember them. Wife says I should grab the feathers and tie a few flies.

Maybe a female Kestrel.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&b...7.0.oncpMHGZieI

I saw a Peregrine Falcon hit a perched pigeon in Portland once.
Speed, cloud of feathers, over in a heartbeat.

Check out the sharp shinned hawk and Cooper's Hawk in the links below. I've watched a sharp shinned hawk take a number of birds off our feeder and on the ground. Watched small birds evade capture by diving into holly trees or hedges, too. When I've "confronted" them after a kill, there's always been a stare down, and an ending where they fly off with their meal, just like you described.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sharp-shinned_Hawk/id

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Coopers_Hawk/id

I will second a Cooper's which I see chasing song birds most often. They seem to have abnormally long legs and tail feathers compared to other raptor species and what amazes me most, is that they aren't much bigger than a robin.


I found a dead one last week, the body was too far gone to offer a clue what happened to it, but I did pull some tail feathers that may be useful to a fly guy. They are black and white barred and about five inches long.


I would think a fly made with components of a predator could offer a distinctive mystique.

I used to watch a Peregrine Falcon who would hunt the train tracks. He would perch in a tree over looking a spot where they buckled and unbuckled the cars which caused grains to spill out. Flocks of pidgeons would soon be on the grain and in a flash that Falcon would swoop down and nail one before it rose a foot off the ground. I always wondered how the Falcon chose which one it was going to kill because it was always a bee line at a specific bird with no indecision.

While we are on the subject of raptors.....my parents once had a basketball sized Barred Owl they couldn't shoo away. It would kill birds in their yard and then stand triumphantly over the carcass, wings spread and screech really loud for about ten minutes. Sounded more like the scream of someone being tortured. You could pretty much walk right up to him and he would hold his ground. Drove them crazy for most of one summer.

We had a small owl of some type come into summer steelhead one night. (out in the boonies)
We were "sitting around the campfire" BS-ing and that little owl just sat up in one the alders looking at us as though he was part of of group, listening.
He would fly off occasionally and then come back.

I have seen small hawks, barred owls, barn owls, and eagles all take prey right here. The single most interesting was an eagle that killed a young heron. Gawd awful noise with that heron squawking and all those big wings flapping around. The eagle finally pulled the dead heron up on a cedar log and ate the breast and some of the neck, then flew off. Wasn't much of a meal for the size of that bird, though. Those herons are all feathers, almost no body at all.

Best one we ever saw was a green wing teal get snatched as it tried to land in our decoys. Red tailed hawk.

One reasons we go to Spectacle Lake every year is the reliable opportunities to watch Ospreys take trout. We often see five or more attempts a day. They miss pretty frequently.

There's been a Cooper's hawk hanging around our backyard off and on for the past month. Usually lands in the tree and watches the bird feeder. Then one day I noticed it on the fence about 25' from the house, then the next time it landed on the pole that the other feeders are hanging from about 10' from the house. Cats were sitting in the window not sure what to think.

A Cooper drilled a starling off our bird feeder, right outside our kitchen window and the kids got to watch from about six feet, as the hawk ripped it to shreds. I explained that we had a guest for dinner except he eats his outside.




I have seen several ducks plucked out of the sky but the most amazing thing I witnessed was an eagle stalking a greeb. The eagle was perched above in a fir snag and sort of lazily swooped down on the greeb which immediately dived and the eagle continued past to another perch on the other side of the bay. When the greeb surfaced, the eagle swooped again and landed right back where it started. After about eight repititions, the greeb was too tired to dive and the eagle just as calmly picked it up.


I was blown away by the strategy and total efficiency of the entire campaign; a dozen wing strokes and the eagle was in complete control before it even started the greeb didn't even have a chance.