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.

hawk eats beloved dove

This past Sunday, on the 3800 block of S. 9'th St. in south Arlington, a hawk swooped down and snatched a pet dove placed on a tree branch to enjoy the great outdoors.  One of the dove's human friends was sitting nearby.  But this was not enough to protect the dove.

The dove was named Paci, which is Latin for "peace".  She was a gentle, quiet, friendly bird.  She was the subject of a blue-ribbon-winning photograph in the Arlington County Fair (see photo above).  She is sorely missed.

Birds of prey are active in our neighborhood. Bald eagles, the national bird of the U.S., have naturally chosen to reside in Rosslyn and raise a family here.  Bald eagles and other birds of prey are native species here.  Their presence amidst Rosslyn's soaring, built architecture is wonderful.

The natural world is beautiful and violent.  Beware.

hawk kills squirrel in park

At approximately 3:53 pm EDT on Dec. 10, a hawk swooped down on a squirrel feeding peacefully in Fort Myer Heights Park.  The hawk grabbed the squirrel and flew with it to the ivy-covered embankments across the street.  When an intrepid Ode Street Tribune reporter moved closer to the scene of the assault, the hawk flew up into a tree and stared down belligerently.  By this time the squirrel was well dead.

On Saturday morning, we received a report of a hawk eating a squirrel on Constitution Avenue on Friday about noon.  Whether the perpetrator of this act was the same bird that killed the Ft. Myer Heights Park squirrel is unclear.

Our squirrel readership is hereby warned to raise its threat alert.