Why do birds take off from the feeders all of a sudden – and all at once?
If you have been watching our live-stream camera over the last few weeks you will have noticed that on most days, it is standing-room-only at the feeders. That is because it has been so bitterly cold. When you are watching the live-stream, there is weather information on the top left corner of your screen for our area of Illinois – temperature and wind speed are included. We have had flocks of birds and several at a time of birds that are not part of tight flocks like Tufted Titmice, Downy Woodpeckers, and Mourning Doves. But as you are watching, all of a sudden – and completely synchronized – about 90% of the birds will take off with a huge whir of flapping wings. And they scatter in all directions. Often they return within a minute, but sometimes they do not. When they almost immmediately return, they have probably been startled by either Cleon or I moving at one of our windows. But what about when they do not come back for several minutes or even longer?
The bird in this photo is most liketly the culprit. Although we do occasionally have a Sharp-shinned Hawk, we have at least two pairs of Cooper’s Hawks living within two miles of us all year round. Sharp-shinned Hawks are only here in winter. These Cooper’s Hawks live in the vast riparian woodlands we have across the lake, but there are times when one or two of them are in our neighborhood. Two of our neighbors also have bird feeders. Cooper’s Hawks prey on songbirds, and feeders are just like a buffet line for them. We do not begrudge this hawk an occasional meal and luckily, they only appear one at a time and sporadically, so they are not a problem.
If they would become a problem – come every day and since there are at least 4 of these hawks, take bird after bird after bird from our feeder area, we would take our feeders down for a few weeks so the songbirds would disperse and not congregate all in one spot. Hawks deserve to eat just as the songbirds do, but I do not want to make it easy for them. And remember, we are no different from these hawks – they eat songbirds and we eat chickens, pigeons, doves, and pheasants. The only difference is – we cook ours.