I find this very interesting as yesterday I witnessed something very similar. I spent about half an hour watching a Sharp-shinned Hawk chase 2 Pileated Woodpeckers. I had a male and a female Pileated trying to coming to my suet and a Sharp-shinned Hawk came in and began chasing them. The hawk would chase one a short distance until it would land in a tree near the other, then the hawk would sit up above them. The Pileateds would work their way up the tree closer to the hawk and then the hawk would give chase again. The male took a break and ate some suet and then joined the female in a tree near the hawk and it would start all over again. It was amazing to watch. It looked like maybe a territorial fight to me, I can't imagine the SS thought she was going to have Pileated for lunch. The Pileateds finally left and the SS sat in my tree waiting for its lunch to arrive. A crow came to harrass it but soon left to go across the street and join about a dozen other crows in harrassing a Great horned Owl that was trying to snooze over there.
Sandy Aubol Polk County East Grand Forks, MN ________________________________ From: Randy Frederickson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, February 14, 2010 11:09:50 AM Subject: [mou-net] SS hawk after pileated Yesterday I watched a sharp shinned hawk repeatedly try to nab a pileated woodpecker. The hawk would only engage the woodpecker when it was flying (which I thought a bit odd since I would think the exposed back of the WP on a tree a reasonable target), but every time the woodpecker would fly to a different tree the sharpie would try to grab it. The wingspan of the woodpecker seemed at least that of the sharpie and I can't imagine either bird would have gone anywhere but down had the sharpie actually grabbed its quarry. Although I did not see any feathers fly, the sharpie appeared to hit the woodpecker at least twice. The pileated seemed no worse for the wear when it came back to my suet and peanut feeders later in the day. I saw a Coopers hawk engage a pileated last year, but in that encounter, the hawk seemed less serious about actually grabbing the pileated. Randy Frederickson Willmar ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
