Rebecca Rosen pleaded as the hawk refused to budge from a hotel balcony to retrieve a chunk of mouse meat off the gloved arm of a guest at the five-star Rosewood Sand Hill resort in Silicon Valley.

because Cooper’s hawks are bird-eating hawks. “Cooper’s hawks have adapted extremely well to urban life,” says Lori Arent, interim director of the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota.

The next morning, their leftover crumbs would attract sparrows, doves and starlings—birds that Cooper’s hawks like to hunt and eat. “The hawk understood the connection between the ...

Banner photo of a Cooper’s hawk eating a morning dove, courtesy of Mike’s Birds via Creative Commons.