The Cooper’s Hawk Accipiter cooperii By: Gavin Scientific Classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Falconiformes Family: Accipitridae Genus: Accipiter Species: cooperii

Natural History

Flying was always the way to go. An ancient birdlike creature called the Archaeopteryx was discovered in Europe. Two samples of this ancient bird were dug up, one in Berlin and one in London. The Archaeopteryx was amazingly similar to the modern birds of prey, especially the Cooper’s hawk. Some of the similarities were talons or hooked claws, feathers, and size. They are both about the size of a crow.

Birds have evolved to make flying easier. Their high ankles and hollow bones allow them do easily and routinely what humans can only dream of doing. Their graceful flight and cheerful singing have made them a favorite of many people.

Hawks have always been known as powerful and amazing creatures. Hawks are from the Order Falconiformes, which means they’re falcons. Humans have always admired the hunting ability of falcons. In fact, the art of falconry goes back to two thousand B.C., in the middle and far east. Falconry is taming birds of prey to hunt and fetch things for their keepers. The ancient Romans and Greeks used falconry, and more recently many kings of England named it their favorite sport.

The Cooper’s hawk was discovered in 1828 by William Cooper. William Cooper was a hunter who brought specimens to ornithologists. Because he had no expertise in identifying birds, he brought the specimens to Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte. Charles Bonaparte was Napoleons nephew. Unlike his uncle, who set out to conquer the world, Charles made a slightly less ambitious goal of becoming the father of systematic ornithology. Charles Bonaparte saw that the specimen was a new animal and named the species after William Cooper.

Habitat

The Cooper’s Hawk resides in North American forests, in both coniferous and deciduous trees. It makes its nest high in the tree, twenty-five to sixty feet in the air. They are made of twigs on the inside and pieces of sturdy bark on the outside. The male defines a one to two mile radius around the nest. This is the territory that “belongs” to that pair. Other hawks or nesting birds would be kicked out if they managed to invade their territory. The nests they make are often near the border of the forest and a plain or farmland. The Cooper’s hawk lives in the protection of the forest, and hunts in the wide open farmland.

In a coniferous tree, the nest of the Cooper’s hawk is built on a sturdy horizontal branch. It would be twenty-five to thirty inches across and six to eight inches high. Coniferous means that it has a cone for example pine trees. Coniferous trees are very common in Maine.

The nest made by a Cooper’s hawk in a deciduous trees would be in the crotch where two limbs meet. They are approximately twenty-four inches across and seventeen inches high. Or slightly narrower or higher on the sides. The word deciduous comes from the Latin word, decidere which means, to fall off or cut off. Therefore you can guess that deciduous tree are trees that have leaves that fall off. Maples, oaks, and cherry trees are deciduous, for example. These trees are also very common in Maine.

Present Status

Cooper’s Hawks are threatened in the State of Maine.

Physical Description

The Cooper’s hawk is a warm-blooded vertebrate. Vertebrate means it has a backbone and it belongs to the phylum Chordata. The Cooper’s hawk ranges from fourteen to twenty inches in length. The wingspan ranges from twenty-eight to thirty-seven inches. They have broad wings and the tail is long and rounded. The genders are very similar except for the fact that females are a little bit larger.  Color varies a lot between adult and young or immature birds. Immature birds have yellow eyes and a brown head. They have a dark, short, hooked beak. They are all brown.

The adults have red eyes and a black head. They have a blue-gray color on their back with the exception of the lower wings that are a pale gray color. The underside is checked with dark brown and light brown.

The female incubates four to five bluish eggs for about a month. She gets very upset if a sharp-shinned hawk (a very similar although smaller species of hawk) nests in the same area.

Diet and Feeding Habits

The Cooper’s hawk waits on a tree branch eyeing the prey. Without being seen, he or she waits until the prey has its head turned. At that moment the Cooper’s hawk swoops silently down and quickly kills its prey with its talons.

The Cooper’s hawk is a very important species because it helps keep a variety of small mammals and birds in check. The Cooper’s hawk eats starlings, bobwhites, blackbirds, chipmunks, and squirrels. If the Cooper’s hawk were not present in the Maine ecosystem, these animals would become too numerous.

The Cooper’s hawk also does a favor to Maine. It eats the starling, a small bird that is not endemic to Maine. This means that it wasn’t always here and that our ecosystem hasn’t had time to adjust to them being here. The starlings mess up the food chain by eating too much and not being eaten enough. So starlings got overgrown. That's right, the annoying swarms of little black birds. It just happens that starlings are the perfect hawk prey. If there were a regular number of hawks this would be perfect:  hawks get fed and starlings aren’t overgrown. Unfortunately for us, the hawk population is low, so until we help the hawks, we live with the starlings. This is an example of ecology, the study of the relationship between organisms and their habitat.

Most mammals have similar basic digestive systems: stomach, intestines, etc. Birds have a completely different system that is better fitted for a small flying creature. The food goes down through the esophagus into the crop. This is the place where the food is kept. Sometimes a bird eats so much that the crop fills up and the bird can’t even fly. This luckily isn’t permanent because the food moves on into the proventriculus. The proventriculus has acid in it, similar to our stomach. As the food is beginning to break up, it moves to the gizzard which chops it up and takes many of the nutrients out.

So the obvious difference between bird and human digestive systems is the crop. If we are hungry we go to the kitchen and get food. Birds have to hunt for their food, so if they get a catch they want to make the best use of it that they can. Birds can store the food in the crop and make the nutrients last longer.

Causes of Endangerment

Due to the fact that the Cooper’s hawk eats small birds and mammals, they have no trouble finding food. They have no true predators, and they are not hunted for plumage or meat. You might be thinking right now, not many predators and lots of prey, how could they be endangered?

You must keep in mind that the Cooper’s Hawk is not endangered, it is threatened. The reason it is threatened is because of depleted forest land.

Lumber companies and urban sprawl are major factors. Urban sprawl is when rapid increase in population causes entire forests to be picked through and “urbanized.” The trucks and machinery come in and build five hundred almost identical houses one after another, destroying a large amount of habitat in a very short time.

Some creatures that are having the same problem as the Cooper’s hawk have changed their lifestyle to adjust to urban sprawl. For example, a friend of mine named Phil Hoose discovered when researching for a new book this interesting little story. The peregrine falcon catches its prey from diving from their nest high in a tree. Scientists noticed that the peregrine falcon was losing high trees to dive from. So they introduced the peregrine falcon to high buildings. If they nested on the ledge of a high building, they could catch pigeons instead. It worked!

Unfortunately for the Cooper’s hawk, no similar solution has been found and they are forced to retreat further and further back into the woods.

Personal Essay

What is the value of wilderness to our society? That’s a good question, isn’t it? We were once the monkeys we see mistreated in the circus. The cats that are our pets were once the fierce jungle wild cats we now fear. Maybe in the near future something we thought was useless, for example, rats, mosquitos, or jellyfish proves us wrong. What if a chemical in jellyfish skin could cure cancer? Every living creature has its own pros and cons. Our job is to treasure, value, and love the pros and simply work around the cons.

Almost every thing we do is based on our ingenious use of plants and animals. Next time you see a food or nutrition pyramid, take a look. You’ll notice that all six different types of the food we eat come from plants and animals. Even the sweets section comes from sugar cane. In addition to that, the books we read, the houses we live in, even the clothes we wear are somehow related to the resources given to us by plants and animals.

You know that animals don't talk, except maybe in Bambi. But what if they did? What would they say? My job is to speak for my animal, to say what they would say if they could.

A Cooper’s hawk would tell you that humans can live anywhere in the world and that the Cooper’s hawk has a very small area that is perfect for them. Now we are destroying the few places that they can live. Trees.

This is my opinion about the value of wilderness:

Forest Management

by Gavin Bauer

I start out as a little seed
and soon I am a sprout.
now I grow into a tree
I’m big and tall and stout.

The people come
and cut me down
and now I’m used to build a town
and not a single person stops to hear my silent shout!

But inside I’m a little tree
and I wish they were hearing me
‘cause I am yelling silently
that I want out!

But do you think the people pause
and wonder if their noble cause
is truly noble or if not?
I doubt they even think that thought.

Is there an ingenious solution
to stop the cutting and pollution?
If there is I’d like to know
so that with this poem I can show
that good things come from those who think
and not from making our forests shrink.

Bibliography

* Lahontan Audubon Society. 2002. www.nevadaaudubon.org/bird sites/CHawk.htm. (February 26 2003)

* Cooper’s Hawks. wwwcsf.cs.vcdavis.edu/˜pomeranz/text/avs15l1.txt

* Grids, Jack L. All The Birds of Prey. New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins. 1999.

* Zip, Herbert. 112 Birds in Full Color. New York: Simon and Shasta. 1949.

* Hoose, Philip. Personal Interview. January 6, 2003