Monday, May 2, 2011

a Cooper's Hawk probably ate beloved dove

As part of its ongoing investigation into Paci's death and the death of a neighborhood squirrel, the Ode Street Tribune spoke with an expert from the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia.  He was holding a friendly and peaceful red-tailed hawk that had become gravely ill from an infected foot wound.  The Raptor Conservancy nursed the hawk back to good health.


Red-tailed hawks eat squirrels.  The hawk that ate a squirrel in Ft. Myer Heights Park clearly was red-tailed hawk.  This hawk probably got its foot wound from eating a hard-fighting squirrel.  The Ode Street Tribune believes that squirrels in our neighborhood are more courageous and fiercer fighters than squirrels in other neighborhoods.  We thus suspect that this hawk had been preying on squirrels in our neighborhood. We don't hold that against it.

We don't believe that this hawk ate the beloved dove Paci.  This hawk just doesn't have a mean look in its eyes.  Maybe it didn't know that that the dove was a beloved pet.  In any case, red-tailed hawks don't tend to eat birds, because red-tails are too big and not agile enough to fly through a maze of tree branches.  Cooper's hawks are smaller and have a tail that gives them greater maneuverability.  Hence the hawk that ate Paci probably was a Cooper's hawk.

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