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The distress call described so vividly by Celia Rutt is a natural reaction, beside biting, on the part of a Cardinal to being captured. There is evidence that the pitch of the distress call of some birds is uncomfortable to the ears of some predators. Dogs we all know find very high pitch sounds painful. A dog is a mammal, like a human, and the bird was probably not distinguishing the quality or size of the predator that had a firm hold on her.
Another possibility is that the call the Cardinal made was a signal to other birds to mob the hawk and chase it away. This occurs frequently. When I go out, I sometimes find the birds moving in a loose circle around something in the maple tree. On one occasion it was a Screech Owl, on another, a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Apparently the mobbing by a number of very vocal birds so confuses the predator that he or she cannot pick out one bird for a meal.
During the Spring and Summer breeding season, birds will gather to mob and harass a snake intent on robbing a nest of its contents. Fledgling birds, just out of the nest and not in the best flying condition, frequently fall victim to cats who hear their calls for food and focus with deadly accuracy for the kill. The cats are frequently mobbed by diving, screaming birds.
Crows often gather to harass Red-shouldered and Red-tailed hawks that are doing nothing but resting in a tree. Readers have surely heard and witnessed this.
Readers should consider themselves benevolent, innocent predators with the result that interpreting some aspects of bird behavior will be more interesting.
The writer now looks to make an apology: it has been pointed out to me that I was off by a month on the arrival dates of grackles. I wrote they would return in April. Here in Flint Hill they appeared in early March, soon after I had delivered my column to the newspapers. They now dominate the feeder and illuminate the yard with iridescent plumage. Birds are predictable to a point; at the same time, they do fly. We make the rules; they break them.
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