New Jersey Hawk Adapts to the Modern World, Uses Hunting Strategy With Traffic Lights to Catch Its Prey

Living beings existed on the planet with an intricate ability to adapt to their surroundings and develop new skills. Humans adjusted to modernization by adapting to technological development and understanding how to interact with it. Recent activities of a hawk at a traffic light showed that animals also adapt to the modern world, as published in the journal Frontiers in Ethology. By making use of the urban environment, this Cooper’s hawk used the cars lined up in traffic as cover for its hunt. The bird also took its position on the tree based on the sound of the pedestrian crossing, which was its cue for when vehicles would queue up and create a perfect tapestry for it.

Vladimir Dinets, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, spotted this unusual routine on his way to dropping off his daughter at school. “When I figured out what was going on, I was really impressed. I didn’t expect that,” Dinets stated. It emerged from a tree at the road junction and flew close to the pavement behind traffic that stopped at a red light, according to The Guardian. "It emerged from that small tree, flew very low above the sidewalk along the line of cars, made a sharp turn, crossed the street between the cars, and dove onto something near one of the houses," Dinets explained as the hawk dove to its target of a flock of birds gathered in front of a house.

The researcher found that the house that was on the hawk’s hit list was inhabited by a big family who often had their dinner outdoors. “Next morning, their breadcrumbs and other leftovers attracted a small flock of birds—sparrows, doves, and sometimes starlings. That's what the hawk was after,” he added, as per ScienceAlert. Dinets conducted 12 hours of observations from his car over 18 days during the winter of 2021-22. It was done during weekday mornings and when the weather was suitable for a flock of birds to be in the yard and for the family to dine out. He also found that though predator hawks in the city were not new, this particular hawk was new.

It was interesting how the bird waited for someone to press the pedestrian crossing sign and then took its position to wait for the cars to line up. This was a great sign of intelligence, as it showed an understanding of cause and effect, along with an ability to mentally map its approach, as per IFLScience. Hearing the sound predicted a longer queue for better hunting, and obscurance meant it had to have a memory of the route. The fact that it had arrived recently in the city and managed to learn modern survival tactics was impressive. Most hawks that made this migration usually came from forested breeding and nesting grounds in search of food.

Though the researcher could not note how many hunts were successful, he did see the hawk fly away with a sparrow in its talons. On another occasion, he witnessed the hawk eating a mourning dove on the ground. This Cooper’s hawk was also young, and it was unusual for the young ones to master hunting techniques and often died of starvation, as per the Smithsonian Magazine. Various other birds, like the urban crows, pigeons, and Swainson’s hawks, also showed the ability to take advantage of human environments. They let humans function on their desired terrain and do the work for them so that tasks were made easier for these birds in their daily lives.