I witnessed a Harris hawk attack a mockingbird in mid-flight outside my window once. It was brutal, blood and feathers sprayed everywhere, though the mockingbird managed to fly off with the hawk in hot pursuit. At first, I was like WTF!? Then I became curious. I identified the Harris hawk based on my brief sighting, and discovered that they were native to Texas, where I was living, and one of their main sources of prey is the mockingbird.
It's cheap and easy to encourage birds (and other animals) to come by your window more, if you want to see more of their behavior in person.
A coworker has been putting out food for birds for several months, and regularly has something like 20 different species coming by for it, and another 10 or so species that only show up occasionally. It's to the point now that when he puts out food, he regularly has something like a couple dozen birds at once showing up.
This includes some hawk species. He's got a camera running and has shown my some impressive footage of the hawks hunting the other birds.
After seeing his videos and photos, and hearing his descriptions, I decided to give it a try. For the last few weeks I've been going out and putting unshelled unsalted peanuts on the rails of my deck, which I can watch from the window in front of my computer desk. I've since added black oil sunflower seeds to the mix [1].
I haven't seen nearly the variety of birds he has, and have seen no predator birds. I've mostly got Dark-eyed Juncos, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Steller's Jays, Spotted Towees, and some kind of Crow (either American or Northwestern). A couple of times I've had some kind of gull, and I've seen one or two things about the size of the crows and jays but did not see it long enough to remember enough to look it up.
Besides birds, he's also getting a lot of squirrels, some chipmunks, at least one opossum, and at least one raccoon. His squirrels have gotten to the point that they are not afraid of him. When he goes out to toss peanuts most of them gather at the edge of the bushes and watch him, and then will come get the peanuts while he is there if he doesn't get too close. (I think he also said that the birds have grown much more tolerant of his presence, too, such as eating from a feeder while he is right there filling it).
One, though, actually comes up to his window and jumps around until the squirrel sees that it has been seen, and then runs to the door to wait for my coworker to come out. That squirrel will actually come up and take an offered peanut from his hand.
He's also had the raccoon approach, but was uncomfortable with that and so tossed some peanuts behind the raccoon to get it to move away. A couple evenings ago he went out, and the raccoon was there. It ran away and he thought he'd scared it off and sat down on the porch. The raccoon had actually just circled around the house to come up from the other side. The coworker tossed the raccoon a peanut. It was a weak toss and only went a couple feet. After a few more tosses, the raccoon would hold out his hands palm up, and wait for a peanut to be handed to him. (He (the human, not the raccoon) was wearing protective gloves just in case).
The only thing I've gotten besides birds is squirrels (at least that I've seen). I've seen raccoons in my neighborhood before, but not recently, and a couple of times I put out some seed and peanuts to close too the bird's bedtime, and so there was food on my deck overnight, and it was all undisturbed in the morning.
(I'm only putting out food. The coworker has also added some water features to his landscaping that provide good drinking water for animals. From what he told me and what I've read, that makes a place much more attractive to raccoons, which could be why he's getting them. I do not want raccoons, so will not be providing water to the animals).
I'm pretty sure a lot of the little birds I see live in the bushes and trees in my front yard, because if I put out food near sunrise, I now get up to a dozen of them quickly coming out of those bushes and trees, taking a seed or peanut, and flying back.
If I do the same thing at random times throughout the day, the little birds still mostly come from those trees and bushes, but instead of a dozen or more at once, it is in ones and twos over a longer time.
Finally, if I put out food as sunset nears, it is back to a whole bunch showing up at once.
Thus, I'm guessing that they live in those trees and bushes, and so near sunrise and sunset that are all home. Hence the crowd. In the middle of the day, they are mostly out roaming around looking for food, and so they only find my food when their roaming brings them back home.
I wish I had thought to do some kind of survey of bird population in those trees and bushes before I started putting out food. I'd like to know if they have moved in there because of the regular food, or if they were always there and I just didn't notice them.
[1] ...because they are cheap and birds like them. A 10 pound bag is around $9 at Walmart, and will last for me about 45 days. A 40 pound bag is around $20 dollars.
Be careful with this. We hired an exterminator once to deal with a carpenter ant problem and he said the number one cause of vermin infestation (rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, etc) is putting bird feeders near your house. Apparently the nuts and seeds attract vermin, which inevitably tunnel into your house through openings, and make it their house. I love the sight of birds, but after seeing chipmunks (ground squirrels) dig a huge tunnel network under our front yard, to the point where the lawn was collapsing, I'm not risking it.
The "Deserts" episode of Planet Earth 2 (currently on Netflix) has a decent segment on the Harris hawk for anyone curious. It shows a group of them hunting ground squirrels.
