Causing a Sensation


For at least a week an immature red-tailed hawk has been causing a sensation on Pitt’s campus — so much so that he made it into the Pitt News on Thursday, misidentified as a falcon. 

The reason he’s become famous is that he operates in the human zone.  He perches at eye level, eats on the ground, and flies over sidewalks at chest height.  This may be normal in the wild but he’s doing this on the Cathedral lawn and around Clapp Hall while hundreds of people walk by.  When he changes locations he flies through the crowd and startles pedestrians. 

No wonder he was in the Pitt News.  Here’s a hawk that’s much less afraid of people than your average robin, nearly as unafraid as the campus squirrels.  And that’s one clue to his actions.

Red-tailed hawks go where the food is and there’s lots of it on campus (squirrels and pigeons).  A normal red-tail would perch at tree height and fly high above, but the peregrines are nesting at the Cathedral of Learning and attack any raptor who dares to come above the trees.  That’s why this red-tail stays low.  He’s more afraid of peregrines than people.

And he gets a lot to eat.  His prey stays near us because we’re a food source and provide protection.  Usually their enemies are afraid of us so the squirrels and pigeons think they are safe.  But this hawk breaks the rules and they’re caught by surprise.

Sometimes.

Tony Bledsoe saw a squirrel play Cat-and-Mouse with this hawk last Thursday.  The squirrel browsed the grass below the red-tail who was perched on a fence only seven feet high.  People stopped to watch. 

The squirrel knew the hawk was there and as long as the red-tail didn’t move the squirrel puttered on the grass.  As soon as the hawk so much as blinked, the squirrel ducked under a parked car.  “Ha ha ha!  Fooled you, Mr. Red-tail.”  When the hawk settled back, the squirrel came out and did it again.

This, too, caused a sensation.

(photo of an immature red-tailed hawk at Allegheny Cemetery by Neil Gerjuoy)

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p.s. Click here for a cellphone photo by Dan Normolle showing what the Pitt hawk does when he’s not on campus. (Yes, he’s on the roof of a car!)

12 thoughts on “Causing a Sensation

  1. I think maybe that squirrel played cat and mouse one too many times. My niece – a Pitt grad student – informed me last week that “one of those falcons you like” was eating a squirrel near the Cathedral. I assumed it was a hawk and not a peregrine, but now I know! Kate, once again, a timely and entertaining blog!!
    thanks

  2. Very interesting story! 🙂

    The pic of the Red Tail on the car made me laugh double, since that is the kind of car I have. (roof rack too)

  3. I know this doesn’t belong with this discussion, but I’m wondering if the snapshot camera at the Gulf tower is broken. The image I’m seeing is from Friday evening. My company blocks the streaming videos, so the only way I can watch the nests is through the snapshot cameras.

    For something pertaining to this discussion, I see lots of raptors everywhere I go (although I’m terrible at identifying them)…an odd thing I saw last weekend was a hawk sitting on the ground in the median on Rt 28 above the Pittsburgh Mills exit…not sure if he had just caught something, or what he was doing…just seemed to be sitting there. The hawks in our neighborhood are pretty comfortable with people…we had one fly just over our car as we were pulling into the driveway one day, and a juvenile hawk was perched on the gutter above our front door a few years ago.

  4. wow, I can’t believe that I’m missing this hawk. Hopefully he’ll still be up to his hijinks next month when I visit.

  5. My impression, Kate, correct me if I say anything that isn’t accurate – is that the falcons are grey, light and darker on their backs, and the redtail hawks are generally brown, but can have light or whitish chest coloring and darker brown backs. The falcons have a black streak on their faces that reminds me of Elvis Preasley’s sideburns. The redtails have an all over light brown color on their heads that extends down the back of their necks and stops just above the shoulders. It reminds me of a darth vadar helmet for the area that it covers. Then on their dark brown backs there is a pattern of white dots that look like one V inside of another V inside of another V.

    When falcons fly, their wing tips are pointed just like the wing tips on a pigeon when he flies. When hawks fly, they spread out the feathers at the end of their wings and they look like our hands would look if we just spread out our four fingers. This can really be seen clearly on bald eagles in silhouette against the sky.

    For birds in flight – basically, grey? It’s a falcon. Pointy wings? Either pigeon or falcon. Look for the light to shine thru the tail feathers. Any warm hues or hints of rust or orange, it’s probably a redtail. Good luck and happy birding.

  6. In our back parking lot we have an extremely friendly grey squrrel who comes by & waits for me to throw peanuts out. But I noticed the other day that he has a “watcher” too. A small red tail hawk. He watched up while he eats the nuts, the hawk sort of just hops around brnches & I watch them both. The squirrel has a slight advantage I guess because it is a parking lot he just goes under to eat the peanut then hurries out & grabs another. Nature provides the entertainment. I guess this is just the way everybody goes along to get along. Thank for the pictures & another new adventure on this warm day.

  7. The Pitt News is STILL misidentifying red-tails as peregrines? They did that 2 years ago when I was still a student there. I guess when the peregrines atop the Cathedral of Learning are getting all the fame and glory (and live-streaming “reality show”) every raptor in Oakland becomes a falcon.

    I remember getting a text after class a few years ago that there was some huge bird on the pedestrian bridge across Forbes Avenue. I got over there in time to see a red-tailed hawk tearing apart a pigeon on the outside of the bridge by the law building. You could walk right up to it on the inside of the bridge and only be separated by a pane of glass. The hawk didn’t mind at all. It was pretty awesome to see that close.

  8. There are a lot of red-tailed hawks in the Durham-Chapel Hill-Raleigh area. For a couple years, I would watch one land on a very tall tree outside my office window at Duke University every day at 5 PM. One summer day, as I was leaving the building after work, I walked out the door and the hawk was perched on the railing along the staircase, intently watching a squirrel in the bushes. The sun was beaming off its feathers and the bird just glowed golden–absolutely magnificent. It was probably 2-3 feet from me and never moved. Another time, the bird flew by me at ground level and landed on another railing on our library building, where it perched for awhile. I have also been witness to the hawks dive-bombing the tops of trees on campus and grabbing squirrels away for their meal. One landed on the ledge outside my office window once with a squirrel in its claws, drawing a small crowd to watch it feed. With just the window pane between us, I had a very intimate view. This one was more gray and black in coloration, not brown and black like the earlier one.

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