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This morning we spent some time watching a Cooper’s Hawk in our neighbor’s back yard. The
particular neighbor in question keeps a mini-flock of four chickens in their
backyard, and apparently, the Cooper’s Hawk thought that chicken would make
a good meal on a cold and rainy Saturday. Unfortunately for the hawk,
and fortunately for the chickens, the poultry was locked up inside a coop of
sorts so the hawk couldn’t get at the chickens. That didn’t stop the
hawk from menacing the chickens for a good half hour or more. The
chicken coop is basically a chain link fence, run around a rectangular area
with a loose piece of chicken wire fence thrown over the top of it
all. The hawk would get down on the ground and stare in at the
chickens. This staring would set off a frenzy of clucking and crowing
that we could hear inside our house. After doing this for a while, the
hawk would fly up on top of the chicken wire “roof” and stare down
at the chickens from above. This would set off more frenzied clucking
and crowing. What the hawk didn’t know was that the more he sat on the
chicken wire, the farther and farther into the chicken coop it sank.

Had he flown up and landed on the chicken wire “roof” just a few
more times, there was a better than average chance the roof would have given
way and the hawk would have gotten his Saturday poultry after all. We
weren’t sure initially whether or not the bird in question was a
sharp-shinned hawk or a Cooper’s hawk, but the size of the hawk, and the
fact it was hunting chickens instead of song birds or woodpeckers, helped us
to decide that it was, in fact, a Cooper’s hawk. Regardless, it was really
neat to see a raptor in our backyard in Alameda.