BY HARRY WEEKES
It’s Saturday. I am reading on the couch. Over the past two weeks, there has been a morning “twitch” — flocks of small birds moving around and making a lot of “I’m about to fly to Mexico” noises. They do their best to put on fat quickly and feverishly, scouring our trees and pavers for every seed and insect they can find. They know – fall comes.
Unfortunately, several birds invariably hit our windows. The positive consequence of this has been getting to hold yellow-rumped warblers, keeping them conscious with a gentle bouncing, and then letting them return to forage on a large willow in our backyard.
So there I was, reading various articles about plant consciousness for my classes, thinking about different perspectives on intelligence, and going over arguments for how and why non-human organisms either are or definitely are not intelligent, sentient, and conscious.
A thump on the glass.
I look up to see a bird drop, even as others scatter behind it.
By the time I get to the door, Hilary offers, “It’s OK, it flew off.”
By the time I get out the door, I flush another bird from our aspens, a sharp-shinned hawk. In its talons, now tucked up beneath it, a yellow-rumped warbler. The bird makes a small circle and returns to the trees. When I come back with binoculars, the compact hawk decides he would rather eat in privacy, and flies off, disappearing over the hills.
Sharp-shinned hawks hunt songbirds. Songbirds often move in small flocks, flitting about, looking for seeds and insects. They dart. They scatter. They work as hard to track down an evasive fly as they do to avoid getting eaten themselves.
Sharp-shinneds respond. With small bodies and angular wings, they maneuver rapidly in and through trees and out in the open. Their vision, honed to pick up small movements, distinguish color, and track rapid motion, enables detection and pursuit suited to the task. And, of course, they think. They learn. They make decisions.
One, now common, behavior — flush birds into windows. That’s right. These hawks lurk in trees near bird feeders or where small groups gather on lawns and patios, and they flush the birds into windows. They only need one to hit the glass to vastly increase their chances of capture.
Yes, there are times when this goes awry in the obvious way — a songbird and a sharp-shinned come crashing into the kitchen window. This, however, appears to be a different circumstance, more an accident where neither bird recognizes the glass.
Outside of my house, the small male sharp-shinned swooped in and pulled back. He waited only a moment to pounce, took the warbler from midair, and distinctly turned away from the house. He knew the windows were there.
In one of my articles about whether or not plants feel pain and can see, when a reporter asked the researcher if plants have consciousness, the botanist responded, “No one can answer this because you cannot ask the plants.”
I did not get a chance to ask the hawk.
I do get to watch the remainder of the warblers throughout the morning who, in the reprieve of a sated predator, spend more time out in the open, more time picking insects off the window, aware that the danger is no longer immediate. I do not even have to ask them. They know.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
