Goshawks have become more common in New Hampshire over the last fifty years. That's good news for goshawk fans - but not necessarily good news for chickens.
Welcome to this week's edition of Something Wild. I'm Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
Goshawks. The ancient Persians called them "Bosnama" - king hawk. Attila the Hun wore one on his helmet to scare his enemies. Carl Linnaeus labeled it Accipiter gentilis - "The noble Caesar" - an interesting play on words.
So you can see why I was excited when a goshawk landed right outside my window recently. It was a big, beautiful female, feathered steely-gray with fierce, blood-red eyes.
The only problem was that this magnificent Caesar had one of my chickens! My free-range, silver-laced wyandot was about to become hawk hash!
An interesting dilemma. The naturalist in me was oohing and ahhing over the close proximity to this rather elusive winged predator. The farmer in me was a bit upset, to say the least, about the predicament of my poor hen.
What to do? Well, when in doubt, document! I grabbed a camera and began clicking away. This unnerved the goshawk, and it dropped the chicken and took off. The hen, to my great surprise, leaped up with a loud squawk and ran for cover. She'd been playing dead - and quite convincingly, I might add!
Nevertheless, the accipiter was bound to be back. One of our largest woodland hawks, this round-winged, long-tailed predator is more common now than fifty years ago. As all our farmland grew back into forests, it created great habitat for goshawks - and their numerous prey. When not picking off its domesticated distant cousins, goshawks dine on wild animals as big as woodchucks and as small as shrews.
Unfortunately, that particular predator was set on a chicken dinner. She later picked off one of my oldest New Hampshire reds.
Sad, yes, but I try to see it this way: that earthbound old biddy is now part of a majestic goshawk. Not too many chickens get such a grand finale!
Something Wild is a joint production of New Hampshire Audubon, NHPR and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. For Something Wild, I'm Rosemary Conroy.
