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December 23, 2005Hawk hunts, and feathers fly
A Cooper's Hawk eats another bird, believed to be a starling, in downtown Traverse City on Thursday. At about 8 a.m. it swoops downtown, along East Front Street, snags a starling and eats the small bird from a perch in a tree. The hawk has become a full-fledged topic of conversation at Horizon Books, across the street from the bird's chosen breakfast spot. A group of area residents regularly spend mornings at the bookstore watching the bird, and often point it out to unsuspecting passersby. "Some people have started coming over just to see the bird," said Bruce Tolbert, a Traverse City resident who spends his mornings at the bookstore. The hawk first was sighted about three weeks ago on the sidewalk across the street from the store. It moved into the tree about a week ago. To catch its prey, the hawk flies into ivy that grows on a nearby building and chases starlings out until it nabs one in a scatter of feathers, Tolbert said. The hawk nibbles on the bird for more than an hour, then puffs out its feathers and flaps away. The hawk often lingers in the tree for several hours, spectators said. "There's feathers everywhere," Tolbert said. "He doesn't miss very often." But sometimes, hawks do miss. Rebecca Lessard, director of Empire-based Wings of Wonder, said cars pose the biggest threat to the birds' hunting strategies. Last year, Lessard nursed a Cooper's hawk back to health after a collision with a car fractured its wing. The hawk likely was chasing a crow before it was hit, she said. "When they're in a chase with a bird, they notoriously hit cars," Lessard said, adding that it's possible the bird she released in downtown Traverse City a year ago is the same raptor that spends mornings across from Horizon Books. "I would prefer to release them in the deep dark forest, but they do very well in downtown Traverse City," she said. The Horizon Books hawk generally doesn't take flight if people approach, but it's not fearless, said Marc Bertrand, a Traverse City resident who watches the hawk. "He'll fly away sometimes if there's a dog," Bertrand said. "He'll leave his prey there and come back and finish eating." Hawks are able to adapt to an urban environment, which might result in their comfort around humans, said Brian Mastenbrook, a wildlife habitat biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' Gaylord office. Starlings, introduced to the U.S. in the 19th century, drive out native birds through competition, Mastenbrook said. But using hawks to control the starling population is not an effective method, he said. "That hawk will never be able to impact the population of starlings on its own," Mastenbrook said. "It would take many, many hawks to affect that number. There are probably more starlings killed by cats." People are so intrigued by the hawk they'll often come into the bookstore in the morning and ask if it's appeared that day, Bertrand said. "We watch him because he's beautiful and interesting," he said. "You can see he's the subject of much conversation."
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