In a recent paper, a researcher noted a bird’s surprising urban adaptation: A young Cooper’s hawk used a pedestrian crossing signal to help it hunt more successfully in a busy neighborhood.
Vladimir Dinets, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, U.S., and study author, noticed the Cooper’s hawk’s (Accipiter cooperii) behavior while taking his daughter to school. At an intersection, cars traveling on a side street rarely had to wait more than 30 seconds at a red light, unless a pedestrian pressed the crossing button. Then the red light lasted 90 seconds, causing a longer line of stopped cars.
The flock of birds feed at house #2. The hawk appeared in the tree in front of house #11 Image courtesy of Dinets, 2025.
Those cars backed all the way up to a house where a family regularly ate dinner outside resulting in bits of food on the lawn every day.
“They didn’t throw food on purpose they just had a bunch of kids, so they left breadcrumbs and stuff,” Dinets told Mongabay in a video call.
Those breadcrumbs attracted a small flock of birds every morning, including house sparrows (Passer domesticus), mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) and European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).
The flock of birds caught the attention of a hungry young hawk. It learned the sound of the pedestrian signal meant cars backed up to the house with birds dining on breadcrumbs, which blocked the flock’s view of the approaching hawk.
Whenever the hawk heard the pedestrian signal, it flew to a branch in a tree down the street and out of sight of the feasting birds, Dinets said he observed. It then used the cover of the cars waiting at the light to issue a surprise attack.
Notably, the hawk appeared in the tree before the long line of cars formed. Meaning it understood the sound meant an advantageous hunting situation would soon form.
“I was just impressed because, to do this, you have to have a mental map of the whole area,” Dinets said. “You have to know when the birds are there, you have to understand the connection between the sound signal and the line of cars. You have to plan the whole thing in advance. So, it’s quite impressive.”
Several bird species are known to take advantage of the built environment. Carrion-eating birds, for example, patrol highways for roadkill, some passerine species gather dead insects from cars, and Eurasian sparrowhawks (A. nisus) have been observed chasing prey into narrow streets with no escape routes.
However, cities are generally dangerous for birds. There are cats to contend with and cars, windows and wires to avoid flying into, all while navigating an unnatural environment for food.
“I think my observations show that Cooper’s hawks manage to survive and thrive there, at least in part, by being very smart,” Dinets said.
Banner photo of a Cooper’s hawk eating a morning dove, courtesy of Mike’s Birds via Creative Commons.
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