A Hawk Comes to Call

Unfortunately, everything in the natural world wants to eat my chickens

Half of owning chickens is providing for their needs—giving them food and water and shelter, making sure the coop is clean and occasionally treating their various ailments—the other half is keeping other things from killing them.

Backyard chicken groups are full of stories of dogs and weasels and foxes and hawks and raccoons and coyotes and bears (oh my) decimating entire flocks overnight. With our fully fenced yard and strong coop, we’ve been lucky. The night vision camera pointed at the coop has shown raccoons prowling around it every so often, testing to make sure the doors are still sturdy before trundling off, disappointed, into the night. But hawks are still a danger. Until I had chickens I never noticed how many of them hang out in the suburbs. Thanks to bird feeders which bring easy prey into open spaces during the hungry winter, hawks have become a more common presence in urban and suburban areas. I always kept a wary eye on the Red-tailed Hawks that occasionally circle the house but they were never a problem. Not because they didn’t see the chickens or because they weren’t a danger to them but because our yard has what I consider a backyard chicken keeper’s best friend—a flock of crows that live nearby.

Photo by ejbSF

Crows, as most chicken keepers learn, don’t like hawks coming close to where they live. I can usually tell when one is nearby by the cacophony the crows kick up. When a Red-tail does fly near the house, they don’t stay long before the black feathery muscle arrives to drive them out. The hawk is actually larger than the crows but the birds band together to drive the bird off in a behavior known as “mobbing.” This seems appropriate since I think of the arrangement between myself and the black birds as a protection racket of sorts. I keep the bird baths full of water for the crows to promptly mess up by dipping chunks of bread into it (if you know why crows do this, please tell me. I hate it.) and whenever I put the chickens back in the coop, one or two crows usually perch close-but-not-too-close and peer at me with an occasional hungry caw, waiting for their reward.

When I’m done bribing the chickens back into the coop with mealworms, I grab an extra handful and walk into the driveway. I look at the crows pointedly and throw the treats on the ground in front of me before backing away slowly. The crows take their tribute as soon as I’ve gotten about ten feet away.

The crows consider our yard part of their territory and I’ve done everything in my power to encourage it even if it sometimes means they line the telephone pole screaming at my dogs when it’s their turn in the yard. Crows remember people—and animals—that have wronged them and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if one of our high prey drive dogs once did something a crow wasn’t fond of. Sorry, crows.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that if you make friends with crows they might start leaving you small gifts in return. If they’re leaving any for me, I’ve yet to find any of these trinkets. But keeping the chickens from getting attacked by hawks is a pretty good gift…when it works.

I heard the chickens making a strange sound and went outside to investigate. I’d barely opened the door when I was confronted by a whirlwind of sounds and feathers and jumping. A Cooper’s Hawk was attacking Phryne, my white Polish.

I’d never seen a Cooper’s in the yard before. Not knowingly anyway. Though there was that one time over the summer that there was a commotion of small birds screeching in a holly tree that only ended when a hawk flew out with a small bird in its talons. My husband and I had been sitting right next to the tree but didn’t see where the hawk had come from in the first place. It had probably been there the whole time. While Red-tails watch prey from a high perch then swoop down to catch them, Cooper’s Hawks like to hide in dense areas then sneak-attack their prey. The chickens often hid underneath an area of the yard completely shaded by trees. The hawk had probably been hiding in one of them too, just waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Phryne jumped into the air and squawked. The hawk fluttered right around her mop of hair, talons outstretched. I started yelling, waving my arms as I stomped toward the hawk. “Stop! Leave her alone! Get out!” I’d gotten within two feet of them when the hawk flew away. Phryne was still in a state of panic. She jumped a few more times—right into the glass door that led to the house. She was still fighting for her life even though the fight was over.

Panicked, I picked Phryne up to check her over. I expected the worst. The only nice thing about white feathers is that blood is easy to spot. There wasn’t much of it. The hawk had nicked her blue earlobe and a few drops of blood had come out. It took me a while to believe that was the extent of her injuries. The two inches of feathers on top of Phryne’s head didn’t give her the best peripheral vision—it was probably why the hawk went for her and not the other hens—but it also probably saved her life. Without that fake target to aim for, the hawk might have gotten a hold of her before I even stepped outside.  

I ran Phryne down to the coop and shut the door before searching for the other hens, worried that maybe Phryne hadn’t been the first stop the hawk made. They were hard to find. Usually when I call they make a noise back in response but when I found them—huddled together in opposite ends of the yard, statue-still beneath leaves or the branches of last year’s Christmas tree—they stayed silent and refused to move from their hiding places. I had to carry them one by one back to the coop.

It’s been almost two weeks and other than one afternoon when I saw the hawk swoop across our driveway, it hasn’t been back. But the chickens aren’t nearly as carefree during their now-supervised outings in the yard. Phryne takes the long route to join the other chickens, running under shrubs and plants and pausing to check for predators before popping out for even a moment. She keeps her body low to the ground when she has to pass through an open area (though with her white feathers it doesn’t make her any harder to see). Now when the rest of the flock leaves the coop, they cross the unprotected driveway one at a time. Everyone lets out a giant cackle and half-runs-half-flies across it. I can’t tell if it’s meant to make them a harder target to catch or to give anything that might want to eat them second thoughts. If I were a hawk I wouldn’t want to mess with those loud, crazy birds.

Chicken keeping makes for strange bedfellows. I never would have expected how much my relationship to the natural world would change by bringing these domesticated birds into my life. I often see crows foraging in the grass right next to my flock of hens. They don’t seem to mind this. But sometimes a squirrel will get too close to Olivia or another hen and she’ll rush at him with a whirl of feathers, beak at the ready, and chase him back to a respectful distance. The wildlife in the yard seems to act differently because this is a yard with chickens living in it. I have my theories, but I don’t really know why or even if this is the case. I certainly think about the wild animals in the yard more now that I have chickens that are subject to the same weather and temperature.

I’d like to give the crows a pass for lapsing on our deal. Maybe the way the Cooper’s Hawk hunts by stealth, hiding in a tree only to rush out upon its prey, makes them less prone to mobbing from crows than the soaring Red-tail. Maybe out of breeding season the crows simply didn’t care as much about protecting their territory—and my chickens by extension. Either way I’ve been upping the number of mealworms I give the crows in the hopes that they’ll give my yard some special attention. I don’t know if it’s working but, like I said earlier, it’s been a few weeks and the hawk still hasn’t come back. The chickens are miserable on lockdown. They either don’t know or don’t care about the danger lurking outside their coop compared to the danger of boredom if they’re stuck inside it for one more day.

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News from the Coop!

The coop is decked out for the holidays which I appreciate even if the chickens couldn’t care less. We’re all ready for the days to start getting longer. Even when they do get to free range it’s often raining or cold or windy and the chickens pop out, peck at a little grass nearby, then run back inside and complain at me because obviously it’s my fault that the weather isn’t better.

Thelma and Louise are somehow still laying eggs nearly every day. Olivia, who only hatched this spring, is the only other chicken laying. Between the three of them and the extra eggs I started storing back in the fall, it looks like we’re going to make it through winter without buying a single egg at the store! I’m pretty egg-cited about it.  

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-Tove