The food chain in flight
Call it a
”
Wild Kingdom Moment.
”
When you pay attention, it happens more often than you might
guess. Interactions between animals and their surroundings are
often played out in front of us.
The food chain in flight
Call it a “Wild Kingdom Moment.”
When you pay attention, it happens more often than you might guess. Interactions between animals and their surroundings are often played out in front of us.
I recall the time, paddling a canoe down the Salinas River, when a peregrine falcon attempted to make lunch out of a duck.
The ducks survived by being onto the bird’s game. While we were unaware of the raptor overhead, the ducks already were preparing for the attack. They gathered together, and paddled back and forth across the river nervously.
Then the falcon fell from the sky. Wings at half-tuck, the raptor plunged to the river.
And no ducks took flight. They skittered across the water like marbles in a barrel, but none had the nerve to lift off.
That was a good strategy.
The falcon came up empty that day, all because the ducks knew not to take wing. Had they done so, the falcon would have plunged after them, talons balled into fists, and struck one with a blow akin to that of a baseball bat swinging for the cheap seats.
Without the opportunity to take flying fowl, the falcon’s evolutionary niche was left bare.
As I accompanied our daughter home Tuesday, we shared a Wild Kingdom moment.
At the foot of a neighbor’s driveway, a bird was perched on the concrete. It was a hawk of modest size. The bird was a Cooper’s hawk, a member of the group of hawks called Accipiters.
Not long ago, most people knew the hawk by the much more descriptive name of chicken hawk. The bird is a specialist. With short, deep wings, and a long, rudderlike tail, the Cooper’s hawk is built for sudden bursts of speed and great maneuverability.
It is built to prey on other birds.
And the bird we spied had, indeed, done so.
Our neighborhood is suffering a plague of pigeons. Once upon a time not so long ago, a pigeon was a rare sight. Now, they nest in crannies on our roofs. Their cooing has become a nuisance. Their prodigious droppings are a health hazard.
But on Tuesday, there was only one pigeon to be found in our neighborhood.
It was the bird clutched in the talons of that blessed Cooper’s hawk.
Yes, the bird standing in a neighbor’s driveway was standing atop the fresh corpse of a pigeon.
We watched as the hawk opened the bird up, and proceeded to devour prey almost as large as itself.
I went back to the scene of the crime after work, and discovered a scattering of feathers, and a fistful of bloody grain – the contents of the pigeon’s stomach. Nothing else remained.
Both birds had accomplished their jobs.
Pigeons, natives to North America, once were wild birds, nesting on edges along cliffs.
As we moved in, and brought our structures with us, pigeons adapted, and began nesting on rooftops. Dairies and cattle operations created feeding stations for the birds.
Then we domesticated them, and in so doing, encouraged gross fecundity.
Now these once-wild birds produce as many as six generations of chicks per year.
On Wednesday, our neighborhood is still bereft of pigeons, and I have one hawk to thank for it.
Is it cruel to celebrate the drama that played itself out on our Hollister street this week?
I think not. As I sit down to dinner tonight, I’ll think a little longer about where my own food comes from, and about my own role in the larger community of life.
