Watching the Neighbors: The End(?)

Squirrel on nest April 19,2020 (Margo D. Beller)

This Sunday morning, when I put out the bird feeder as I always do on nonrainy days, things were the same and yet very different.

The Cooper's hawks were gone.

Up until Wednesday, the hawks were acting as usual. The male flew to the nest with twigs at first light, the female sat on a nearby branch facing where the sun would be if it wasn't cloudy. Every so often they noisily mated. At some point the male must've flown off because of what happened next. Two fish crows flew to branches close to the nest. The female Cooper's, comparable in size to the crows if not a bit larger, flew at them. They left and she sat in the nest for a long time, so long I thought there might be eggs in there. But after 15 minutes or so she, too, left.

That's been it.

Squirrel at work
(Margo D. Beller)

I have done nothing to prompt this. The yard birds and I had been adapting to the presence of predators. I had out only one feeder. When the male cardinal came after singing from a nearby tree, he would not stay long. His skittish mate came by even less frequently. Squirrels stayed up in the trees until the hawks, as usual, flew off for the day. For the past two weeks or so, the hawks had returned to repeat the process at dusk before going off to roost.

It took three days to realize there was a lot more activity in my yard. Squirrels were digging in the lawn for buried acorns. An assortment of bigger birds that would make more of a meal for a Cooper's - redbellied woodpecker, jays, mourning doves - returned to the feeder. Each morning I had looked at the nest and seen no activity. Then, yesterday afternoon, I watched as a squirrel climbed the tree to the nest with a bunch of leaves in its mouth.

Cardinals in apple tree, pre-mating (Margo D. Beller)

It had claimed the nest. While Cooper's use sticks and line the nest with bark, squirrels tend to use leaves and other softer materials. No squirrel would dare climb into an active hawk nest.

This morning, unusually cold for mid-April (frost on the roofs and some of the plants), I looked up at the nest and it was a different shape - piled high with leaves. The squirrel sat on the branch beneath it. Then it climbed down for another bunch of leaves.

When the male cardinal came to the feeder he was back to his usual habit of grabbing a seed and eating it atop the pole. At one point he flew to his mate and I thought he would give her a seed. Instead, they mated far more quickly and silently than the hawks.

Frost on quince leaves; most of the flowers are gone (Margo D. Beller)

What prompted the Cooper's to abandon the nest the male had spent over two weeks building? Was it the heavy rain we'd had for several days this week? The unusual cold? The lack of sun? Had the female felt threatened by the fish crows discovering the nest? Did one or both die in an accident or attack from something larger, either winged or human?

Or was it simply these were two immature birds that, after being prompted to mate and build a nest by that internal process triggered by longer, warmer days, couldn't continue the work of raising a family?

I have no answers. It could have been any one or more of those things. What I do know is I have more birds in the yard and may now be able to put out more feeders again. Unlike the cloud of coronavirus that continues to hang over the world for the foreseeable future, the uncertainty caused by the hawk nest appears to be gone.

The hawks may be elsewhere, of course, and there will always be other predators either passing through or nesting nearby. The yard birds and I will have to remain vigilant.