Hawks, Not Parrots, On The Attack
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 1st, 2008
No doubt upset by the recent DNA study saying that their former cousins the falcons are more closely related to parrots than to them, a pair of red-tailed hawks attacked a Cape Cod, Massachusetts, woman on Monday, June 30, 2008.
First it was an alligator at nearby Barnstable, on Cape Cod, and now attacking hawks. Cape Cod is turning into a hot bed of weird animal news this summer. Perhaps a Sea Serpent sighting will occur any day now? Seriously, I would ask Cape Cod-located cryptozoologists-in-training to keep an eagle eye (no pun intended) out for more unusual animal stories for the area. (The local media will be more open to printing them, not that there will actually be “more,” per se.)
Anyway, to the matter at hand: The Cape Cod Times reported that Ginny Ouellette of Cotuit, Massachusetts, was walking in the vicinity of her Eisenhower Drive home when a pair of red-tailed hawks, which have a nest across the street, swooped down on her. She was hit once in the back of the head but it wasn’t until the second pass that the bird drew blood, she said.
The birds scraped her head with its talons and it took 10 stitches to close the gash.
“I didn’t actually see it,” Ouellette, 78, said. “It came up in back of me.”
Several people in the neighborhood reported being attacked by the two dive bombing red-tailed hawks, including one man who said he was bombarded five times, a Cotuit Fire Department official said.
The birds have hit at least three people and have swooped down on more, Barnstable animal control officer, Charles Lewis said.
When firefighters arrived with the ambulance shortly after noon Ouellette had a cloth to her head to soak up the blood, a Cotuit fire official said.
Lewis suspects the hawks are attacking people because they have young in a nearby nest. But the situation should change when the young birds leave the area, he said.
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About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I think it’s time to capture those 2 and carefully move their nest away from residential areas. I had a weird experience recently with a raven. No, not weird…creepy. I was trying to get my weed-eater started when a raven quietly swooped down behind me and somehow “landed” (no better word) at my bedroom window. It was literally holding onto my wall and attacking the window (hopefully just its reflection). When I realized what was happening I made some noise flailed my arms. The raven let go and dropped to the ground. I thought it was injured, at first, because it just walked away, but after it turned the corner (the distance of a 2 car carport and a 1 car garage) it flew off. Has anyone seen “The Birds?” Yeah, that’s what it felt like. Ya know, at the beginning of the bird’s attack where only 1 or 2 were seeming a little weird.
EXCELLENT PICTURE OF THE HAWK!!!
Glad there was not a knee-jerk reaction to kill the hawks.
I’d suggest people in the area walk with umbrellas opened and over their shoulders.
This is only going to continue and likely get worse. Wild animals are becoming less fearful of man as he encroaches into formally wild areas and the animals adapt to his presence. Confrontations always occur when one creature invades another’s territory. We are going to face the sad choice of either learning to live with animal attacks or we are going to have to forcibly control animal populations.
It may that the increase in aniimal attacks are because we have reached a critical juncture in population growth in both humans and animals. We protect many species which allows them to thrive, but at the same time we are taking their habitat forcing them to live in human populated areas. At some point something is going to have to give and the recent attacks may just be the beginning. Finally we will be left with a disturbing scenario: Do we choose more of them or more of us?
I hear helmets are quite fashionable this time of year 😉
I am no expert but I don’t think the hawk in the picture is a red tailed hawk. They’re pretty common here in Texas and they have red tails.
The only unprovoked animal “attack” I have ever had on me was a bird. I was sitting in the back yard, drinking a frosty Braggot (mead beer hybrid) that I had made myself, when a humming bird flew right up to my face, hovered, then poked me in the eye and flew off. It sounds like something that should be “good luck”. No idea what I did to deserve that. Maybe he is a beer-drinker.
Hi Sparky1959 – like other hawks (and even sea gulls), red-tailed hawks go through different phases of plumage during their lives. Also, plumage tends to vary to some degree between individuals. I recently saw some video footage of a red-tailed hawk living in a rescue center, whose plumage is nearly pure white; with the exception of a couple of feathers in the tail, and on the throat. And this bird is not unique. Also, the plumage of any bird will appear different at different times, depending on whether you are looking at the back or the front of the bird, how far away it is, the brightness of the daylight when you view it, etc.
I think you’re looking into these incidents a bit much Hoosier. The hawks had a nest nearby. Most any bird will defend its nest and the area around it from humans. I’ve been mobbed by blue jays, swallows, robins, black birds and countless others. This had nothing to do with a “loss of fear of man”. When the young hawks fledge and fly out of the nest the attacks will cease…till next year.
It is a stock photograph of a red-tailed hawk, not an otter, not photoshopped, and not a doctored image of a dead taxidermy item being thrown into the air.
I do agree that it’s going to come down to either them or us…
Hopefully a compromise will be made. Maybe some animal population control with some stoppage of human encrachment?