I get enormous satisfaction watching birds at my feeders. I love the spastic antics of Chickadees and Titmice; full of nervous energy. The deliberate, focused eating of Cardinals and House Finches. And the alarming bomb of the Bluejay, who joins the feast with such an exuberant entrance, it often startles the others momentarily, causing an explosion of fluff and feathers before they all settle down at their respective perches.

I don’t have an elaborate feeding system; just two sunflower seed feeders, a thistle feeder, which remains neglected for some reason and a suet feeder. I also have a heated bird bath that up until recently seemed only attractive to the 6 squirrels that share my yard as their territory. I guess, now that every puddle or water collection is frozen, the birds finally have shown interest in my offering.

On a recent glance, I noticed the feeders were suspiciously empty for several minutes. It was a cold day. If we were experiencing a warm day, I’d understand as many birds take advantage of insect hatches that occur when we have warm spells, but this was a cold day. I suspected my neighbor’s cat who seems to delight in stalking our backyard for easy pickings.

I went outside with the intention of chasing this cat out of my yard, but was surprised and admittedly pleased to find another predator.

Sharp-shinned hawk watching bird feeder

An adult (red eyes and horizontal streaking on his breast), Sharp-shinned Hawk, was sitting on the fence that is shared with my cat neighbor.

Sharp-shinned hawks are bird specialists, often catching feathered friends on the wing and eating them. They frequently hunt backyard bird feeding stations for easy prey, not unlike my neighbor’s cat. This is one predator I don’t mind sharing my yard with. Birds are birds. Well, not really, my hackles still go up when the starlings devour the suet, but that’s a different story.