HaWK on Birds

     As far back as I can recall, I was HaWK, to my grandfather.  Harson Welsey Kelley, he'd say, then use the acronymic nickname.  A cousin or two used it and anyone else hearing it would assume it was from the sharp features and prominent nose.  Harson was hawk-like, stern and sharp-eyed.
     The first word Harson repeated without prompting was "bird," and then "robin."  When he was four, he repeated his new brother's name as "Robin" for Robert.
     By the time HaWK was in grade school, he could identify every bird he saw.


     Starlings are the end of the evolutionary scale for birds. They will outlast all other species, especially songbirds. Their survival is built around the flock mentality.  Solitary starlings are still part of a flock and there are members nearby, unseen. When one flies from being startled, all fly.  Walking closer to a starling for a better look is fruitless.  Starlings avoid any contact with humans.  Starlings don't do backyard bird feeders. Seeds won't keep a starling going. They need the "meat", they need bugs in any form.  However, they will use a bird bath or puddle to wing-shower water deep into feathers, then leave.

     Sparrows, robins, blue jays, grackles, mourning doves, all will hunt in a mowed lawn.  A robin will work and look and wait and watch and finally stab and grab a worm, which it has to tug with just the right amount of pressure to extract the half still inside the turf without breaking it in two.  Which the robin swiftly eats or carries to a nest of young.  They seem to take more time to get the full worm out when feeding young.  They stab and knot it into a tighter parcel to carry and shove into gullets. 
     Flickers will drill into ant hills and flick in the insects on their tongue.  Blue jays will be finding a place to bury a  morsel, and likely won't remember to uncover it again.  Pigeons peck all the seeds in the grass, especially that spilled from feeders.  A grackle will search for worms but are not so successful as robins and will even knock a robin off it's catch to steal a piece of worm,  Sparrows try to move bugs which flee or fly and get captured in short burst of running flights.

     But the Starling is the star in the yard.  They go to the roots, eyes below grass level, beak opening to expose any beetle, worm, centipede, grub or larvae, which is promptly eaten.  No other bird can come close to matching a starlings canvassing and consumption of life forms in a lawn.

     Starlings also are glad to pick and scratch through whatever humans discard to find bits of nourishment or entire chunks of tossed or dropped cheese, meat, bread or dessert.  If it's lying in the road, they'll flit and fly and eat even as traffic is running close by. And when one finds a cache of trash, many are aware and gather to divide the spoils.  The only time a starling exhibits any aggressiveness is over a morsel of food.

     The most intense bird battles are between males in territorial clashes during mating season.  If not fighting another suitor, male birds go through some antics to attract a female's attention.  I've seen a red-bellied woodpecker hang upside down from a lower branch to impress a selected mate.   Sparrows and cardinals will feed bits of food to a female to show domestic qualities, like feeding a brood.

     Male robins will initiate a battle with lots of other male robins. They attack with beak and talon until the ground can't contain their intensity, so they wing the fight in flight, rising up in a blur of flapping and clawing and pecking.
     Sometimes one will dive into the middle of another fighting pair.  However, the usual method is a long, drawn out process of fake worm hunting in close proximity to each other.  They zig and zag and move towards each other, then away.  But not too far.  Soon, they cut the circle down to a small enough space to make an offensive move.  There may be a couple of these which result in defensive dodges or short flights.  Indeed, sometimes one will vacate the yard.  If not, the battle will soon be on.
      Confined to an enclosure, robins would battle to match fighting cocks and certainly the fighting quails in Afghanistan.
     Male starlings fluff out their neck feathers, vibrate their wings and vocalize whistles and warbles and weird combinations of notes to attract females.  Their ability to imitate may contain the sounds of saws and horns.  Starlings pair up with minimum aggression by the males and minimum resistance by females. Observing that starlings return to the same nest area, year ofter year, they may mate for life.  Their nest is usually in a hollow place.

     There were five large trees on the south and east side of Grandpa's yard. Nobody ever identified them and everybody asked what they were.  Sterile walnuts was the only explanation which made sense since they looked like large girth walnut trees.  Flickers used them to chisel out a site to nest.  The first one was taken over by a screech owl.  Which I removed and took to the woods to attract crows, the Klondike boys and I could shoot with my .22 rifle.  The second one was taken over by starlings. The parents remove the chick's waste and it appears to be in a membrane which they easily fly with and drop. Also, the nestlings eventually begin to back to the hole and do business, which tends to leave a smear along the trunk.
     The first time I observed it, Grandpa was standing under and looking up at the hole, wondering about the commotion.  He backed up with a laugh.
   
     Until recently, there was a huge box elder tree in the lot to the west of my property.  Red bellied woodpeckers tried for years to occupy their carved out space. One year I watched the process.  The female is separated from the male by a force of starlings.  Once the male is inside, two starlings will stay just outside and seem to be trying to keep the woodpecker inside. They dive and vocalize and when the woodpecker makes a break they chase and hassle it while a third starling goes inside to take up the battle when woodpecker  returns.  The starling now has a distinct advantage. Plus the other two are back.
     I wondered about the natural ability of the woodpecker to drill into wood, and when I watched one finally get into the enclosure with the starling, I figured  the it was a good showdown.  Have to admit my heart sank a bit when that red cap emerged with a struggle since the starling had him by the leg.
     When that tree was taken down, starlings did the same thing to red bellied's after they'd made the space in a maple tree across the street.  Haven't seen any red bellieds for a few years.

     Robins nest all around me.  One or two nests every year, mostly in small trees near the house.  On the nearest neighbor's drain, where it crooks to attach to the house from the gutter, is a robins nest.  Three years old.  This year, a second batch of eggs is being kept warm. This is not the norm, as robin's nest remains are left all over.  The base is mud and is difficult to be washed away.  Sometimes the remaining thatch may be pecked through for a nest being constructed elsewhere.

     The nearest nesting starlings are as close as my nearest neighbor.  They are using access to the soffitt hollow through a small hole in the cover.  I surmise they use material which deteriorates fast, the remains of which are shoved deeper into the cavity to make way for a new nest.
      Starling plumage is androgynous.  Except for the short period when the plumage isn't filled out, and lighter feathers show in the black.  These young follow and demand food from parents, just like other birds, except they learn to find food, sooner, since it's all they see from other starlings.

     Pine siskin, cedar waxwing, chickadee, juncos, cardinal, blue jay, mockingbird, Carolina wren, white capped sparrow, song sparrow, purple finch, white-crowned sparrow, chipping sparrow, house sparrow, grackle, pigeons. mourning dove, orchard oriole, robins and starlings...this variety of birds has been seen from my windows for the past 15-years.  For the past 5-years, the variety decreases.
     Robins and starlings are the most constant.   Cardinals are nesting nearby.  Carolina wren house is waiting for last year's occupants.
     Neighbor has a couple of seed feeders and ear corn for the squirrels.  I see an occasional grackle (they  nested in the neighbors pines before he had them topped), red-wing blackbird, cardinals, blue jay, large flock of house sparrow and pigeons.  Lots of ground feeding as one pigeon hangs on while flapping wings and spraying contents.  An occasional crow, but lots of pigeons.

9Aug15 -

     As a kid, I had a BB gun and I used birds as my main targets. I seldom hit and killed any.  The ubiquitous bird was the "English" sparrow.  Starlings hadn't happened yet, in SE Ohio in the 1940's.  Sparrows had the messy nests in deteriorating soffits and vacated flicker holes.  They were in any leftovers in garbage and operated in large flocks, feeding on ground and tree insects. And they were always wary of approaching humans.  At the time, I had no idea of their incredible eyesight.  A bird can watch for your gaze on them to move and that's when they fly.  You look back, it's gone. Mounting a rifle, aiming and firing...bird's gone.
    But a hit on a sparrow brings it down.  Small bird.
    Lately, I've noticed the flocks of house sparrows are like those days.  They love feeders and will take roost in bushes nearby so they don't have as far to fly. I have no idea the minute size of whatever it is they clamor for in the gravel dirt dust of my parking place, but groups will peck and flit around furiously until spooked away.

15Aug15 -

     Looked out the window and see a hawk atop the neighbors recently trimmed forsythia bush.  Smaller than a crow and half perched and half supported by wings across the clipped branches.  It was attempting to get at the sparrows in the tangle. The hawk struggled, for balance, then went to the ground and began chasing at the base, around the bush, trying to spook the smaller birds into flying. The sparrows remained.
     The hawk flew up to perch on the roof of the neighbor's car, stayed a few seconds, then dove back to the bush.  A sparrow flew out and the hawk gave chase, but soon returned to a tree near the forsythia.
    For the past few mornings, I've heard a blue jay giving warning cries.  I thought it was watching a cat on the hunt.  Now, I realize it was the hawk.  Before and after I observed it, there was an obvious absence of the pigeons which use my house as a waiting spot for the neighbor to fill the feeders.
     I'm more than a little certain, it was an immature Cooper's hawk.