A Cooper’s Strikes

Most of the time, hawks miss. In my years of birding, I’ve never seen an accipiter or falcon successfully take bird prey in the air. Until today. And from the passenger seat of a moving car, no less.

Earlier, while walking, I saw a Cooper’s hawk zooming around in the strong winds we’re having here on Nantucket. Passing through the same general area later in a car, I saw that long-tailed silhouette in the distance again, descending fast. As the car approached the intersection, a flock of robins burst back towards us and then out of sight. But one lone bird flew across the road — it would have been safer in the crowd of its cospecifics, confusing the predator en masse — and the hawk was suddenly behind it, so much larger, and, evidently, faster. Accipiter’s are built to hunt through woods, surprising their prey with a sudden burst of speed. (Peregrine falcons, meanwhile, stoop out of the sky like a bolt from the blue.) Looking out the front window, then the side, I saw it rise up to catch the robin and grab it by the talons. Then, being in traffic and unable to stop, we were through the intersection and away and it was all over from the viewers’ perspective.