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Yard accipiters and winter flycatchers



On Sun, 30 Jan 2000 Jchat99@aol.com wrote:
> 
> About 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon I heard a bang, outside in my backyard while 
> sitting in my living room.  I thought a limb had broken, however in looking 
> out the window I saw my lamp post feeder shaking.  Beside it on the ground 
> was a large accipiter, a beautiful Cooper's Hawk, looking sort of stunned.  I 
> surmised he had gone after a bird and somehow crashed into the feeder.  He 
> obviously had missed.

Accipiters often recognize feeders as valuable food sources and hang 
around them regularly (some also do this with mist nets). I was surprised 
when I saw one birding organization (I forget exactly which at the 
moment) recommend that anyone who has an accipiter hanging around their 
yard stop feeding until it goes away. Their rationale was that the hawk 
or its intended prey might fly into a window and kill or injure itself.

I may have to wrestle with this issue, as an accipiter was hanging around 
my yard yesterday. As the bird flocks around the feeders thickened 
(including at least two Fox Sparrows, three Purple Finches, two Song 
Sparrows, and 23 Goldfinches), they were also getting more nervous, 
periodically all flushing simultaneously, which made me suspicious. Then, 
while I was in the kitchen washing dishes yesterday, my housemate said 
"something big just flew by and scared all the other birds away." About 
an hour later, with the feeders suspiciously vacant, I saw movement high 
in a pine tree: a nice adult accipiter, I think Sharp-shinned but I could 
not see it well enough to confirm this. I love having a raptor in the 
neighborhood, but would feel terrible if it gets hurt flying into a 
window...

On Sun, 30 Jan 2000, MARJORIE  BRIBITZER wrote:
>
> Yesterday we observed a bird in our yard that is puzzling me. To the best
> of my ability to identify it, it was a pewee, white wing stripes and all.
> It looked fatter than I have seen them before, maybe because it was cold
> and windy, and it was trying to fluff itself up. The Peterson guide says
> these birds have never been observed in the Eastern US in the winter. What
> could I have seen?

According to the Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter 
<http://www.mbr.nbs.gov/id/framlst/framlst.html>, neither Eastern nor 
Western Wood-Pewees normally winter in the United States! The only 
flycatcher which normally winters in North Carolina is the Eastern 
Phoebe. Young birds do have buffy wing bars, but not really white ones. 
If your bird is not a phoebe, it is either something other than a 
flycatcher (maybe a kinglet? they have whitish wing bars), or it is a 
vagrant like the Pacific-Slope Flycatcher. If you are certain that it is 
a flycatcher and not an Eastern Phoebe, then make sure you photograph it 
well, note some of its other field marks (eye ring? bill color? voice?), 
and invite some other local birders to your house to identify the 
critter. I would volunteer, but Hampstead's a couple of hours from 
here...

Good birding,

Josh



Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Zoology

jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/