Young hawk uses city traffic to sneak up on its prey

Early on winter mornings in 2021, commuters waiting at a modest suburban intersection unwittingly became part of a hawk’s aerial ambush.

Parked just beyond the brake lights sat Vladimir Dinets, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee, who had noticed an unusual blur skimming car roofs.

Over 18 separate dawn stakeouts, he pieced together a remarkable strategy. A young Cooper’s hawk had learned to read the rhythms of pedestrian crosswalk signals and the queues of idling vehicles, turning rush-hour gridlock into the perfect hunting blind.

The hawk learned traffic signals

The crossroads in question joins a busy thoroughfare, dubbed “Main Street” to protect residents’ privacy, with a narrower “Side Street.” Most red-light cycles last only 30 seconds, lining up no more than four vehicles.

But when a pedestrian presses the crossing button, an audible “beep-beep” sounds for 45 seconds. The red phase then triples to 90 seconds, stretching the queue past what the study called House #8 toward a small, dense-crowned tree outside House #11. That extra half-minute is exactly what the hawk needed.

Each evening, residents of what was dubbed House #2 dined outdoors, sprinkling the lawn with crumbs. By sunrise, the yard teemed with house sparrows, mourning doves and the occasional starling. All of which were ideal prey.

From his car, Dinets saw the young raptor slip into the tree at House #11 whenever the audio crossing cue chimed. That sound correctly forecast an impending long red light on fewer than four percent of mornings. Once the traffic blocked its quarry’s sightline, the hawk launched.

Hawk’s attack route

The bird’s route never varied. It hugged the sidewalk south of the so-called “Side Street,” flapping less than a meter above the pavement for about 65 meters. Then the hawk banked sharply beneath another streetside tree, shot through a gap between cars, and pounced on the breakfasting flock in front of House #2.

Dinets recorded six such strikes in 12 hours of observation; at least two ended with the hawk carrying off a sparrow or plucking a dove on the ground.

Crucially, the sound cue itself had fallen silent by the time each attack commenced. Statistical odds of the bird merely coinciding with the rare signal were about 1 in 18,600, strongly suggesting it anticipated the longer red phase after hearing the beeps.

Hawk uses cues from city traffic

For the strategy to work, the hawk needed a mental map of blind corners and parked cars, plus an understanding that long queues appear only when the pedestrian alarm sounds.

Dinets says that combination of spatial memory, cause-and-effect reasoning, and split-second timing goes beyond simple conditioning. He says it represents one of the most sophisticated uses of human traffic patterns ever documented in a wild animal.

Accipiter hawks are already famous for stealth, using hedges and fences as natural blinds before explosive charges at prey. Urban goshawks in Hamburg perch on TV aerials, hop through backyards, and even hunt under streetlights after dark.

Sparrowhawks in Ukraine trail streetcars to mask their approach. Yet coaxing meaning from an audible pedestrian signal appears to be new territory.

Seasonal city tactics

Cooper’s hawks rarely breed in densely built areas of New Jersey, but they visit reliably each cold season.

Evidence suggests that the young hawk had arrived only weeks earlier and quickly deciphered the local traffic language. The following winter, an adult – likely the same hawk – re-enacted the tactic twice.

By summer 2023 the sound box at the light malfunctioned and the family at House #2 stopped dining outside; no hawk has been seen since.

Smart survival in cities

City life is perilous for a mid-sized raptor like the Cooper’s hawk that survives on small birds: reflections in glass, speeding cars, and a maze of wires pose constant threats.

But urban terrain also offers dense prey populations year-round. Studies show some raptors hunt more successfully in towns than in forests, provided they innovate.

The hawk Dinets followed joins a growing list of animals – including crows that use cars to crack nuts and foxes that exploit trash schedules – showing cognitive flexibility in human-altered landscapes.

Lessons from a single intersection

Because the observations center on one bird at one junction, they cannot be easily replicated. Still, they broaden researchers’ perspective on how wildlife exploits anthropogenic cues.

The discovery highlights the importance of considering not only the physical obstacles cities impose, but also the new information streams – sounds, lights, queues – that animals might tap.

When commuters sit through an extra-long red light on Side Street, they may grumble about lost seconds. Unbeknownst to them, those seconds once provided cover for a hawk’s silent sprint.

The reseach reminds us that intelligence is not solely a human trait. It wings silently above our windshields, reading the same signals we do – and using them to survive.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Ethology.

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