A splash of bright red next to a small clump of contour feathers on the concrete slab yesterday afternoon was evidence of fresh carnage. A closer look at the feathers this morning showed that they had belonged to a pigeon.

I was thinking of taking down the feeders and not scattering seed. I can’t continue to lure the other birds to the yard—they can’t even find shelter in the thicket, not with Godzilla tramping through it in search of one of them cowering beneath the cover. A friend suggested I try putting out feed at the same times every day. He does that, and his yard birds have learned to fly in, eat, and get out. So for the next few days I’ll feed at morning and evening twilight and see what happens—the hawks have seemed to prefer full light.

I enjoy seeing raptors in the yard and wouldn’t be overly troubled by them dropping in once in a while and making the occasional catch. But providing them with daily meals of wrens, sparrows, pigeons, and doves strikes me as morally problematic. Yes, I know that smaller birds getting eaten by raptors is part of nature’s drama being played out. Hawks are higher up on the native food chain (and it’s not as if the yard birds were ending up in the digestive tracts of neighborhood cats). It doesn’t follow from that fact, though, that it’s a good thing to give them the means to shoot fish in a bucket.

Hawk

I forgot to mention the sub-adult Cooper’s Hawk that was in the yard on Sunday. It caught something that was hiding in the thicket where its […] conspecific found the House Sparrow two days later.

The yard squirrels seem to ignore these predators—not adaptive I think, as a desperate Cooper’s might opt for larger prey—some coming within a foot or two of hawks that have landed in on the ground.

On Sunday, one squirrel went a step further and ran up to the Cooper’s, chasing it from the rock it was was standing on eating its catch (which I never did identify).

Flycatcher

An Eastern Phoebe was a brief visitor on Sunday. It landed on one of next door’s Silver Maple branches that overhang the yard. Good to have species diversity in the garden.

I was looking through past posts and saw that on September 24, 2007, I wrote about a Magnolia Warbler (female) I had seen in the yard, “That’s the yard’s fourth warbler species (the others are Tennessee, Mourning, and Common Yellowthroat).” On October 9, 2007, I recorded one Orange-crowned and one Nashville Warbler in the yard. On September 4 this year, I saw the yard’s first Wilson’s Warbler. The updated warbler list follows:

1. Tennessee Warbler
2. Orange-crowned Warbler
3. Nashville Warbler
4. Magnolia Warbler
5. Mourning Warbler
6. Common Yellowthroat
7. Wilson’s Warbler

Not an extensive list, but not bad for a small urban yard.