Sharpies

Lured onto the deck by mid-March's afternoon sun, we cleaned off two deck chairs and sat quietly about 10 feet from the bird feeder, where mostly goldfinch and pine siskin (see below) squabbled over sunflower hearts. They would arrive one or two at a time, until a critical mass of a dozen or more accumulated, when they would all start away at once, leaving perhaps one siskin stock still, seemingly puzzled by the sudden silence. This cycle of a few becoming a mob at the feeder repeated several times.

After a half hour of squinting into the lowering sun, quietly basking in a taste of spring, we barely noticed when the latest riot of small birds again left en masse, leaving one stationary siskin on the edge of the feeder's pan. Then, Snap! and the little bird was gone, grabbed by a sharpie, or sharp-shinned hawk, who had come right out of the sun and snatched the little bird in its claws. Flying to the choke cherry tree at the back of our lawn, the sharpie plucked and ate its dinner as we watched feathers drift away.

One of the smallest of hawks, the little sharpie and its larger mate once were hunted because of their preference for small birds, including young chicken. In my youth, a young marksman was praised for protecting the hen house from such predation. After much of the northeast became gentrified and breakfast eggs and chicken dinner increasingly came from the supermarket, the sharpie easily switched to raiding increasingly common bird feeders. Indeed, where once huge numbers of sharpes migrated south along favorite routes, decreased migrating bird counts now are attributed to the winter-long supply of small, plump birds at the feeder.