From Education Director, Rachel:
Hi everyone! We are back to the blog! We hope you enjoy this tale of a program that helped us get a little too close to wild birds…
Red-tailed hawks are fierce predators, graceful in flight and formidable in size. They catch one’s eye as they soar through the air but are particularly eye-catching when they have a smaller bird chasing after and harassing them as they fly. This odd sight is common in the spring and early summer. These small birds are participating in a behavior called mobbing.
“Mobbing” occurs when smaller birds swoop at, attack, and work to drive away larger birds. Red-tailed hawks are often mobbed by smaller birds in their territory, but there are many other species that can be attacked through mobbing behavior. Common culprits of mobbing are blue jays, crows and mockingbirds.
This summer, Rosetta and I had the unusual and unfortunate experience of being mobbed by Northern mockingbirds! We were stationed at a beautiful park in Jersey City to present our Birds of Prey program with our raptor ambassadors. Rosetta began the presentation with our red-tailed hawk, Jones, perched on her glove. Before long, a noisy mockingbird family had enough of our hawk’s presence. They swooped down and flew right toward Jones! Even with a human handler, the mockingbirds were bold enough to engage in mobbing behavior. Jones was ducking and attempting to fly away, so we quickly brought her back to her carrier, gave her a nice spray-down with a water bottle (her favorite thing), and put her safely away to rest. She’s never gone so willingly into the carrier!
As luck would have it, there was a large tent set up nearby that we were able to move to for the remainder of our presentation. Program attendees followed us into the tent and we were able to present our last birds free from mobbing. From this new location, we spotted a wild red-tailed hawk that roost on a nearby church steeple! The program attendees had the pleasure of watching the hawk in the wild, soaring high in the sky and hunting with its keen eyes. It wasn’t long until we noticed something change…the hawk was now being chased by mockingbirds!
Birds of prey are not the only victims of mobbing. Some of the program attendees told stories of having been mobbed by mockingbirds while walking in nearby parks.
Given the time of year, it is very likely that mockingbirds living in the park had young chicks in their nest. They were likely protecting them against the threat of a large, predatory bird. While I understand the need to boldly protect their young, we certainly had newfound empathy for the hawks…now that we knew what it felt like to be mobbed ourselves!
