Cooper's Hawks and their Prey

I am obviously partial to predators. They have the charisma, the speed, the strength, the intelligence. We like to see all the animals here, but we love the carnivores, the bobcat and the coyotes, and the hawks (which I haven't mentioned yet). There is a wonderful, visible kind of balance here, and that is, for every predator a multiple of prey animals, which to me is a sign that this is a healthy and complete ecosystem. I have introduced to you most of the meat-eaters here, now let me say something about their prey.

Gambel's Quail probably weigh a couple of pounds and would make a sumptuous feast for one of us to eat. As I was writing that, I paused to look out my window and counted fourteen or fifteen walking by.   It was morning and they were emerging from their hiding places where they had roosted overnight on the bushier right side of our property. As I looked down on them, they were walking mostly to the left,  radiating outward to the areas where they would be foraging this day,

 Later the same day I was still thinking how impossible it would be to try to guess how many were in the yard. It was now early evening and I was sitting on the porch watching the twilight creep in, and from the brush  to the left of me quail began emerging from their day of foraging, speeding up when they walked over open ground with no cover. They came sometimes in pairs, or sometimes with however many survived, now fully grown, of their spring coveys. They were heading for the sheltered places where they would spend the night, which would be on my right. They were beginning to accumulate in numbers as they strode by me, and now I was seeing bigger clusters, twenty or more, and then it was  dark. 

These are the favorite prey of most of the Cooper's Hawks here, and Cooper's are certainly major predators (Tucson the city itself is overrun with Cooper's). One quail is probably a complete meal, which makes them a convenient size. The same can be said for White-winged or Mourning Doves, which the hawks also catch occasionally, but I suspect doves are faster flyers harder to catch than Quail. We see Cooper's Hawks almost daily in our yard, often engaged in wild chases. If they are successful, after mantling their prey (sort of wrapping their prey inside their wings) for a few minutes they carry it up to a long, twisted  mesquite limb in the middle of the yard that is parallel to the ground and up seven or  eight feet off the ground. There they stay for quite a while carefully plucking the bird, creating a small snow shower. Then they carry it off to a more secluded place to eat it. Or, less often (maybe it's when they are really hungry) they just pluck it on the ground where they caught it.

 

A typical conversation around here:

"Hey, there's a hawk out there."

"Up in the plucking tree?"

"Yes, and be careful how you pronounce it."