# Bye bye birdie or when hawks attack **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 21, 2007, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840 "2007-01-21T15:34:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/1 "2007-01-21T15:34:22Z")
So a hawk just landed on a ground dove at the feeder. It stood on top of the bird and kept raking it’s claws accross the bird. I knocked on the window and it few twenty feet with the dove to start the shreading over. The white snow has a few hundred feathers spread all over that went all over on take off like a dandlelion in the wind. ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/2 "2007-01-21T15:42:54Z")
That’s Nature for ya **harmonious** - 🙂 We had the same thing happen a few years ago with a big plump squirrel. The hawk come down and did much like you said: jumped up and down on the poor thing until it stopped sqealing and thrashing… it was bloody, but the hawk at least got to continue it’s gene pool. Hopefully. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/3 "2007-01-21T15:53:29Z")
I don’t care about the dove getting hit. I would have been royaly pissed had it goten the woodpecker or cardinals that were at the feeder. The doves tend to sit on the ground and that’s the place a hawk prefers to give a knockout blow. I refer to the doves as vulture doves, because they sit 30 in the flowering crab at a time, with that bent head jag that vultures have. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/4 "2007-01-21T17:51:04Z")
Hawks are cool. One time after a huge snowfall I looked out my front window and there was a hawk about 6 feet away, devouring the remains of something. It saw me watching and stared at me with the most piercing gaze I have ever seen. I was very glad I was a larger creature AND on the other side of a window. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/5 "2007-01-21T18:36:53Z")
Govenor Dodge state park: I hiked to a high cliff reachable from the backside of the hill, which has an enormous drop off. There was the guts of a small animal laying on the best lookout rock there. A raptor had left it, because there were signs of it’s presence, and you see them flying there sometimes. Devil’s Lake state park: There is a flat granite ledge about ten feet wide that runs for about fifty feet, twenty feet down from the cliff top. You can sit there and watch turkey vultures, ride the up draft thermals. They get within maybe five feet of the ledge and appear from under the ledge rim and float up. It’s very neat to watch, them so close slowly rising up. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bye-bye-birdie-or-when-hawks-attack/388840/6 "2007-01-22T15:09:51Z")
Mark down another raptor fan. Losing an occasional dove is far made up for by the occasional backyard hawk siting. best solution is to make sure there are plenty of bushes and evergreens around to provide shelter for the fodder - I mean feeding - birds. One time walking in downtown Chi I was fortunate enough to see a peregrine hit a pigeon in the air. Man, that sucker exploded like it was hit with a brick. Way cool!