Free Range Photography

Young Sharp-shinned Hawks might be accused of having delusions of grandeur as they figure out what kind of prey they can be successful at catching in their first year of life. I have seen them go after Kingfishers, who seem to find them a bother more than a threat. I have seen them be taunted by Steller’s Jays and Northern Flickers who play a kind of “chicken”, teasing the Hawk to come after them, only to quickly dodge out of the way at the last second, frustrating the hawk while loudly proclaiming their wily superiority.

More than once I have watched one try for a Pileated Woodpecker, a much bigger bird with an attitude to match. But I have never seen it go on so long and in such a wide open setting as last Friday.

I had been hearing persistent calling from two different Pileateds for quite a while when I approached the area they were coming from and soon spotted one of the woodpeckers high on a snag over the river. Not long after that an immature Sharp-shinned Hawk appeared out of nowhere and took a passing swipe at the Pileated. This happened several times. Sometimes, the two would fly off, the hawk in unsuccessful pursuit of the much bigger Pileated, but other times, the woodpecker simply clung to the tree and circled around to the other side of the snag, creating a peekaboo game the hawk was not going to win.

At one point two woodpeckers joined in the game, raising the hawk’s level of frustration to a fever pitch.

After about twenty minutes of these shenanigans, the hawk finally gave up and flew off. I am not a good videographer, but I slowed down the moment of encounter in this video so you could see a bit better what was happening.

On a side note, I found a dead Sharpie in my yard a few years ago. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife accepts these specimens (they even send a box and ice pack and pay for shipping) because they want to know how the bird died, being especially watchful for rat poison. My specimen turned out to have died from starvation, which is one of the more common reason young raptors don’t always make it to full adulthood.