It turns out that the hawk was using road traffic lights to hunt
By
Vladimir Dinets, an animal behaviorist at the University of Tennessee, reported that he observed Cooper's hawks (Accipiter cooperii), a medium-sized bird of prey native to North America, hunting using road traffic lights and pedestrian acoustic signals while wintering in urban areas.
Frontiers | Street smarts: a remarkable adaptation in a city-wintering raptor
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ethology/articles/10.3389/fetho.2025.1539103/full
Street smarts: how a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully
https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/05/23/street-smarts-hawk-use-traffic-signals-hunting
The observations took place at a specific intersection in West Orange, New Jersey, USA, over a total of 12 hours on weekday mornings from November 2021 to March 2022, and six attack attempts were recorded.
Dinets reported that juvenile Cooper's hawks were using the line of cars stopped at red lights at intersections as cover to approach and hunt flocks of small birds, such as house sparrows and mourning doves, that gathered in front of residential areas.
by Rhododendrites
Notably, the hawks learned the acoustic signal of pedestrian traffic lights, which causes the red light to turn red for 60 seconds longer than usual, resulting in longer lines of traffic. When the hawks heard this signal, they would prepare for the hunt and wait until the line of traffic reached a certain length before attacking.
'This behavior suggests that the hawk has a precise mental map of its surroundings, allowing it to hunt successfully even when it cannot see its prey directly, and that it understands the complex relationship between signal sounds and changing traffic patterns,' Dinets said. 'This adaptation is particularly remarkable, as the hawk was likely a young bird that had only recently arrived in the city.'
An adult Cooper's Hawk was also observed hunting in the same area in the winter of 2022, but it has not been determined whether this is the same individual. This behavior was subsequently discontinued after the acoustic signal of the traffic light malfunctioned and the occupants of the house that served as the feeding spot moved out.
There are other examples of birds using vehicles, such as crows dropping nuts onto the road and letting cars crack them, scavengers eating animals hit by cars, and small birds using moving cars as shields to escape birds of prey. In Ukraine, it has been reported that hawks of the genus Accipiter use moving cars and trams as cover for hunting.
'This level of sophisticated situational awareness and use of human traffic patterns is unprecedented in wild animals,' Dinets said of Cooper's hawks.
By Don Owens
In addition, the social news site Hacker News also reports the following anecdote: ' When a small plane was radioed to head to a parking area, all the birds in its path flew off at once, as if they had heard the radio. Perhaps they were watching the plane's movements closely and learning from them .' 'It seems that migratory birds often use infrastructure such as roads, railways, and power lines as route markers .'
Related Posts:
