Birds of Fury: A True Underdog Story

One of the beauties of living in Michigan is sharing the land with the majestic Red-tailed and Cooper's hawks.  You don't have to reside near the forest or farmlands to find them either.  There's enough chipmunks, mice, toy poodles and rats in the suburbs to keep the hawks soaring our skies just as frequently.

The oddest place I have regular hawk sitings, though, is at my office's parking lot.  My workplace is located in the most uber of suburban locations.  A setting filled with nothing more than office complexes, restaurants, big box stores and asphalt.  What they hunt there is beyond me.  Egg McMuffin wrappers?  Pen caps?  Stray staples?

Still, as I eat lunch in my car every weekday, above me they soar.  If I leave my sun roof open, I can even get one to start circling me! I don't know if it's my PB on wheat they're interested in or the fleshy allure of my German nose, but it should go without saying that I don't leave my sunroof open much anymore.  (Besides, I'd hate to imagine the disappointment of the predator upon realizing that there's more cartilage than meat up in there.) 



Mmmm... meaty.  My nose, in car, at lunch.

Anyhoo, the hawks have become just lovely but ordinary parts of the backdrop at this point in my life.  Until I was pulling out of the parking lot last week and before me stretched a brand new scene.

Picture it:  A lone hawk glides across the sky, tipping a wing to take his graceful turn around a giant cross.  (Yes, there's a giant, million-foot tall cross jutting out of the ground at the church across the way. Structured out of, what looks like, some strange mix of steel and PVC piping.) 

Something seemed to be interrupting his peaceful flight, though.  He'd soar and then scoot.  Soar and then double-scoot.  Soar, then jerk suddenly from one side to the other.  It's rare to even see a hawk flap a wing, so I wondered what could be wrong?  Was he having a mid-air seizure?  A bad case of the hiccups?

Then I noticed two other objects.  Littler in size and fluttering busily around him, somehow managing to disrupt the mighty bird's flight.

I was waiting in line to make a left turn (a process that usually takes at least five minutes to perform in rush hour traffic.)  So, as I idled, I felt safe enough to take my eyes of the road and squint more closely into the sky.

The smaller objects were flying clumsily, at a rate of a hundred flaps to the hawk's one. The sloppy flight pattern made me think they were bats at first, but then I saw the first bite. 

Yes, I could see it now, they had beaks!  These were birds.  Larger than sparrows, smaller than breadboxes.  Their flight, more strenuous in a higher altitude than the norm and their bodies slightly shaky from adrenaline... but these were birds. Chasing their predator.  IT WAS AWESOME!

Like I said, I was driving at the time and could hardly pull out my cell phone to document the fight while trying to simultaneously merge with traffic.  But, if my memory is as photographic as I'd like to give it credit for, the scene played out exactly like this:

(The combat helmets might be a fuzzy misremembering, but I'm pretty sure the tiny aviators were real.)

Every fifty flaps or so, one of the pair would catch up to get it a good peck or nip, as if to say "Ain't no birdie got time for that!" and then fall back again behind the mightier bird's speed and power.  They never gave up though. Catch up, bite. Fall behind, flap like mad. Repeat.  Little dive bombers, ticked off and unafraid.  (And, don't forget, the whole while circling the cross of the Lord our Savior... which I absent-mindedly forgot to include in my illustration.)  A cinematographer's dream, I'm sure!  An underdog action scene in the realest sense.

I finally had to turn left and pull away because the traffic behind me was beginning to think I was heavily sedated, forgetting to inch my way forward and pry my way into rush hour.  Face glued skyward with mouth most likely agape.  But, the little guys weren't giving up when I pulled away, which left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

I later described what I saw to my mom, who said she had seen the exact same scene play out in a totally different neighborhood earlier this summer.  This led me to Google "small birds attacking hawks" and I found out that this sight isn't so uncommon after all.

I found this;

(Images via onejackdawbirding.blogspot.com)

And this:

And many more images that were either copyright-protected or I was too lazy to download.

You gotta love that spunk, though!  I gather these hawks have long been terrorizing the small bird community and the tiny and brave created lynch mobs as retribution for their fallen friends, family and feathered young.

The top of the Great Lake State's food chain has always consisted of coyotes, bears, humans and birds of prey.  But, it somehow levels things out to learn that the bottom fraction of the chain are scrappy little links, that are taking none of this lying down!