My friend GrrlScientist over at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) does a wonderful feature each Friday called “Birds in the News”. It got me to thinking that I haven’t drawn many birds recently (they were ALL I drew as a child), so it was about time and I was trying to decide exactly what I could do when this darted by my bedroom window…

For a closer look at this little male Accipiter cooperii click here.

…and “nailed” a Mourning Dove amid an explosion of wings. A flock of about 35 to 40 doves was on the ground below my deck and apparently this Cooper’s Hawk came around the corner of the house before the doves realized he was there. I used the phrase “an explosion of wings” and I meant it. If I had been asleep the sound would have awakened me as surely as a gunshot.

I first noticed the hawk as he came through a stand of spruce on our property line and using the house as cover made the direct and controlled gliding descent shown above. Only when within 10 yards of the house did he tuck his wings tightly and without a single flap accelerate and rocket around the corner.

By the time I stumbled to the kitchen where I could see my bird-feeding area (I actually shovel a large area near brush cover clear of snow), the “Coops” was standing on his feebly struggling victim. He adjusted his grip a number of times before finally grabbing the dove’s head with his long thin toes and starting to pluck the feathers from its neck. At this point Tito*, who I let out a few minutes earlier, came back from his morning visit to our little woodlot, and the startled hawk flew off in one direction, while the dove, to my utter amazement, flew off in the other! That same mourning dove, missing feathers and looking beat to hell, was back today feeding with her flock. One tough little bird!

We tend to think of birds of prey as incredibly efficient hunters and they are, to a degree. However, most birds and mammals die from predation in nature’s equivalent of a mugging or knife fight. Very often it’s not clean or swift. The only redeeming feature is that neither predator nor prey possess any malice or choice in the event.

Had I the time, I would have tried to paint the actual attack. But since I’ve got four posts (including the infamous mammoth piece) in progress right now and it’s seemingly taking me forever to draw anything, I wanted to get this one up as soon as possible. This is what I could do.

Again, it’s a digital piece done in Photoshop with my Wacom Graphics Tablet. I try at first not to worry too much about exact proportions, but simply rough in (and I do mean rough) an approximation of the idea. Here is the first of about 20 layers.

I meant to save more, but I have to admit that I got into it late on Wednesday evening, and simply forgot to duplicate and save what I should have. I do have these two close-ups of the head.

The top is the refined sketch with 3 layers beneath it showing through, and below it is the completed face. This is an adult male at least three years old. Immature birds have yellow eyes and it takes three seasons before the iris deepens to red. When I saw the hawk standing over the dove I realized it was a male because of its small size. In hawks and owls, the female birds are larger than males. In the three North American Accipiter* species, this is markedly so.

I’ve got all three species on my “yard list” by the way (71 species at this point that have been seen in or from my yard), Sharp-shinned, Cooper’s and Goshawk in order of increasing size. Sharpies and Coopers are not uncommon, and last year I had a first year immature Goshawk take a gray squirrel right at the lawn edge. About twice a week I’ll find a small scattering of feathers or a little blood on the snow. It seems I’m feeding the birds on a two-tiered system.

*Tito…The dog that won’t die…16…and after yet another close call doing very well thank you.

*Accipiters are “bird hawks” with short rounded wings and long tails for acceleration, agility and control in tight situations. Other birds make up much of their diet. Apparently they are immigrants from Eurasia. I can find no fossil NA record before the Pleistocene. Hawks and eagles in general go back to the early Eocene (45+ million years ago) in Europe (England), but are absent as fossils before the Oligocene (33 million years ago) here in the Americas.