I was at Lilydale Park in St. Paul, Minnesota the other day when I heard a Cooper’s hawk calling. I played a Cooper’s hawk call to see what would happen–in my experience it has been soundly rejected by Cooper’s hawks. This time, the bird called back, flew closer and called again. I was stunned. The bird came closer, continued to call and then flew right over my head. It was a blue jay doing a spot on Cooper’s hawk call. I managed to get a bit of video:
Here’s a link to a video I took of a Cooper’s hawk and you can hear it calling for comparison. Here’s a Cooper’s hawk call on Xeno-canto.
I was impressed because I have heard blue jays imitate other birds like broad-winged hawks, red-shouldered hawks and even crows, but there’s usually something a little off, either they do it too fast or too quiet. But this bird had the sound and the pace down pat. It was interesting to note all the other birds calling in warning in the background. I did notice that the robins gave their warning call, but not the same one that they give for a real Cooper’s hawk, the high down-slurred whistle. The robins were wary, but they seemed to sense it wasn’t a real Cooper’s hawk.
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Fascinating choice of bird to imitate – and, wow, spot on. There is a bird around our neighbourhood that imitates a cat. Hmm, I wonder if it is one of the jays?
You should do an audiogram of the two calls. Maybe then you could see the difference that the robin could hear.
Some of the jays in my neck of the woods (Oakland CA) do red tail hawks, and they really had us fooled for a while. I haven’t gotten a good enough look to tell whether it’s a Stellar’s or scrub jay doing the mimicry. We’ve got both flitting through the pines, terrorizing everything but the squirrels.
As always, fun and educational!
Larry–that is a cool idea.
We have Stellar’s Jays in the back yard that do a pretty good Red Tailed Hawk. It started out as one guy (girl?) doing it to clear out the yard before going for the bird feeder, but over the years he’s also been teaching his kids how to do it.