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Weekly Update on our Four Red-shouldered Hawk Nestlings



Sunday (May 14) marked the 19th day since the hatching of what has become a
real nest-full of Red-shouldered Hawk chicks in a big Hickory tree in our
back yard in Chapel Hill.  All four nestlings are doing fine.  They seem to
be well fed; all four seem to be exactly the same size and all four are
growing quickly.  All the brown feathers on their wings, back and tail are
now distinct and they spend some time preening these feathers.  They all
spend some time perched (a bit precariously) on the edge of the nest
stretching and flapping their wings.  While they actively compete for food
when the mother (or father?) is tearing something apart and handing it out,
we have noted that even though the nest is getting noticeably crowded, we
have seen no signs of aggression amongst the chicks.  With many baby animals
there is wrestling and biting; we've seen hardly any of that.

Our most exciting sighting this week was on Tuesday (May 9)(this was also
witnessed by a visitor who happened to be here - Janine Perlman).  At about
6:15 pm as I set up my scope, I saw a long black thing hanging out of the
nest.  It turned out to be the tail end of a large, thick black snake.  At
least two feet of snake was hanging out of the nest, and the adult hawk was
actively tearing strips of meat off the part of the snake that was in the
nest and handing the shreds of snake meat to the chicks one by one.  For a
black snake, it looked very thick, so I think the actual snake must have
been somewhere around four to five feet in length.  I wish I could have seen
the adult carrying it up to the nest.  In any case, they continued to eat
every last shred of the snake.  Janine saw one of the chicks work hard on
swallowing the last several inches of the tail of the snake, all in one
piece.  You could see a real lump in the throat/gullet of the chick for at
least twenty minutes thereafter.  At about the same time that the chick was
swallowing the last piece of snake, the adult flew off with the remaining
piece of the skeleton, a piece about two feet long.  It was all quite a
sight.  

Alan and Sally Johnston
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
agj@rti.org