By making your backyard more attractive to wildlife, you invite both predators and prey species in search of water, food and shelter. It’s unavoidable. A bird bath or feeder attracts not only the seed-eaters and insect-eaters, it also attracts bird-eaters. Most experts will tell you to locate bird feeders out in the open to ensure the safety of your avian guests. With an unobstructed view of the skies and landscape that surrounds them, they are less likely to become lunch for lurking felines or dive-bombing raptors.
The sharp-shinned hawk is an aerial acrobat and a lethal predator. The first sign of one’s approach in my backyard is the muffled explosion of wing beats – a dozen or more mourning doves simultaneously taking to the skies as Nature’s version of a heat-seeking missile rockets down upon them from above. All I see is a blur streak past the window, followed instantly by a cloud of feathers from the hawk’s unlucky victim. Within a few seconds the predator begins making a meal of its prey, and it’s only a matter of minutes before he has satisfied his appetite.
Some people find it difficult to observe activity at the top of the food chain – watching one animal take the life of another – but these are normal goings-on in the natural world. A sharp-shinned hawk dive-bombing a dove is no different from a frog snatching a dragonfly from the air and gobbling it down or a spider ensnaring a grasshopper in its sticky web.
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