Latest news with #Dinets
Time of India
24-05-2025
- General
- Time of India
How Hawk uses traffic signals to hunt the prey
Image: National Geographic In New Jersey, where the morning rush is usually defined by coffee-fuelled commuters and red lights that last an eternity, one unexpected local has mastered urban survival: a hawk. No, not a metaphorical Wall Street type — a real, feathered, razor-taloned Cooper's hawk. Spotted by zoologist Vladimir Dinets, this clever raptor has figured out that when the crosswalk beeps, it's showtime. As soon as traffic lines up at a red light, the hawk swoops low, using cars like camouflage to ambush breakfast. While we rely on traffic apps to avoid delays, this bird uses signals to schedule murder. Efficient. Hawk's modern hunting technique The hawk's hunting strategy is so precise it might as well be using Waze. As soon as the pedestrian crossing sound chirps, the bird knows it's go-time. With a dramatic flair that would put any Hollywood spy to shame, it flies low above the sidewalk, hides behind cars, zips across the street, and then lands on its unsuspecting target. The intended victims? A buffet of sparrows and doves enjoying breadcrumbs left by a local family. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 2025 Top Trending local enterprise accounting software [Click Here] Esseps Learn More Undo It's basically a hawk version of DoorDash. But with more blood. No traffic, No Hawks, its weekend for everyone Dinets observed the hawk 18 times, almost like a devoted fan following a rockstar on tour — except this one had feathers and a killer instinct. Every weekday morning, like clockwork, the hawk appeared at the same intersection when the crosswalk beeped. But on weekends? Total no-show. No honking, no breadcrumb buffet, no traffic queues to hide behind. The hawk clearly knew it wasn't worth the flight. It's as if it checked the human schedule and said, 'Meh, no brunch crowd today. I'll sleep in.' No traffic means no cover. No breadcrumbs means no birds. It's like opening Netflix only to find your Wi-Fi is down — the intent was there, but the execution is impossible. Brains over brawn Forget brute force — this Cooper's hawk is running a masterclass in stealth, timing, and pattern recognition. With the kind of precision usually reserved for special ops units, it uses pedestrian signals as cues, cars as camouflage, and instinct honed by evolution to grab breakfast before most people finish theirs. According to Dinets, this style of ambush hunting requires not just quick reflexes but advanced cognitive skills. The hawk isn't just reacting. It's planning. If it had opposable thumbs and a laptop, it might be lecturing at MIT. But for now, it's settling for a protein-rich sparrow. City life is wild — Literally Living in the city is hard enough. For humans, it's overpriced rent and delayed trains. For birds of prey, it's power lines, speeding cars, and the occasional confused pigeon. And yet, this hawk isn't just surviving — it's thriving. It's learned to navigate our chaos, using our routines against us. Evolution didn't make it louder or larger. It made it smarter. In this game of survival, the one who understands the traffic light wins.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Urban hawks may use traffic lights to ambush prey, study finds
A hawk in a New Jersey town has learned to use a neighborhood traffic light to hunt more effectively, a study published Thursday found. The study in Frontiers of Ethology represents further evidence of how certain bird species have adapted to urban life in surprising ways. 'The behavior described here is an impressive feat of intelligence,' the author wrote, 'going a long way to explain the species' ability to successfully colonize such unusual and dangerous environment as [an] urban landscape.' Past research has uncovered crows that use cars to process food, carrion-eaters adapted to await fresh roadkill, and jackdaws that pick dead insects from the front panels of cars. The findings also follow reports of a Houston suburb terrorized by a dive-bombing red-shouldered hawk thought to be protecting her chicks. The behavior in this study, however, is particularly complex. As lead author Vladimir Dinets of the University of Tennessee described in a Friday editorial, a Coopers' hawk of West Orange, N.J. learned how pedestrian crosswalks backed up cars beside an ideal hunting ground — creating a perfect spot for an ambush. That intersection had a pedestrian crossing which caused one lane to be open — and the intersecting lane to have a red light — for longer than usual, which was marked for blind pedestrians by a loud tone. In the paper, Dinets described how, while stuck in traffic, he noticed a young Cooper's hawk drop out of a tree, fly low along the line of backed up cars, and dive on a bird by one of the houses. That house, he noted, was special: the family that lived there often ate dinner outside, and 'their breadcrumbs and other leftovers attracted a small flock of birds – sparrows, doves, and sometimes starlings. That's what the hawk was after.' But he noticed something even more interesting: The hawk only 'attacked when the car queue was long enough to provide cover all the way to the small tree, and that only happened after someone had pressed the pedestrian crossing button.' 'As soon as the sound signal was activated, the raptor would fly from somewhere into the small tree, wait for the cars to line up, and then strike.' Because Cooper's hawks are migratory, he noted, this meant the juvenile hawk had figured out this hunting hack just a few weeks into its time in the new city, 'and it had already figured out how to use traffic signals and patterns.' Cities are constantly changing, and the hunting spot didn't last forever: The family moved, taking with them the breadcrumb supply, and around the same time the safe-crossing tone stopped working. 'I haven't seen any Cooper's hawks around here ever since,' Dinets wrote. But those hawks in particular, he noted, are one of the few species of birds of prey — like skyscraper-roosting peregrine falcons and squirrel-hunting red tailed hawks — that have adapted to live in cities. 'I think my observations show that Cooper's hawks manage to survive and thrive there, at least in part, by being very smart,' he wrote. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Hill
Urban hawks may use streetlights to ambush prey, study finds
A hawk in a New Jersey town has learned to use a neighborhood streetlight to hunt more effectively, a study published Thursday found. The study in Frontiers of Ethology represents further evidence of ways in which certain bird species have adapted to urban life in surprising ways. 'The behavior described here is an impressive feat of intelligence,' the author wrote, 'going a long way to explain the species' ability to successfully colonize such unusual and dangerous environment as [an] urban landscape.' Past research has uncovered crows that use cars to process food, carrion-eaters adapted to await fresh roadkill, and jackdaws that pick dead insects from the front panels of cars. The findings also follow reports of a Houston suburb terrorized by a dive-bombing red-shouldered hawk thought to be protecting her chicks. The behavior in this study, however, is particularly complex. As lead author Vladimir Dinets of the University of Tennessee described in a Friday editorial, a Coopers' hawk of West Orange, N.J. learned how pedestrian crosswalks backed up cars beside an ideal hunting ground — creating a perfect spot for an ambush. That intersection had a pedestrian crossing which caused one lane to be open — and the intersecting lane to have a red light — for longer than usual, which was marked for blind pedestrians by a loud tone. In the paper, Dinets described how, while stuck in traffic, he noticed a young Cooper's hawk drop out of a tree, fly low along the line of backed up cars, and dive on a bird by one of the houses. That house, he noted, was special: the family that lived there often ate dinner outside, and 'their breadcrumbs and other leftovers attracted a small flock of birds – sparrows, doves, and sometimes starlings. That's what the hawk was after.' But he noticed something even more interesting: the hawk only 'attacked when the car queue was long enough to provide cover all the way to the small tree, and that only happened after someone had pressed the pedestrian crossing button.' 'As soon as the sound signal was activated, the raptor would fly from somewhere into the small tree, wait for the cars to line up, and then strike.' Because Cooper's hawks are migratory, he noted, this meant the juvenile hawk had figured out this hunting hack just a few weeks into its time in the new city, 'and it had already figured out how to use traffic signals and patterns.' Cities are constantly changing, and the hunting spot didn't last forever: the family moved, taking with them the breadcrumb supply, and around the same time the safe-crossing tone stopped working. 'I haven't seen any Cooper's hawks around here ever since,' Dinets wrote. But those hawks in particular, he noted, are one of the few species of birds of prey — like skyscraper-roosting peregrine falcons and squirrel-hunting red tailed hawks — that have adapted to live in cities. 'I think my observations show that Cooper's hawks manage to survive and thrive there, at least in part, by being very smart,' he wrote.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Most Ingenious Hawk in New Jersey
In November of 2021, Vladimir Dinets was driving his daughter to school when he first noticed a hawk using a pedestrian crosswalk. The bird—a young Cooper's hawk, to be exact—wasn't using the crosswalk, in the sense of treading on the painted white stripes to reach the other side of the road in West Orange, New Jersey. But it was using the crosswalk—more specifically, the pedestrian-crossing signal that people activate to keep traffic out of said crosswalk—to ambush prey. The crossing signal—a loud, rhythmic click audible from at least half a block away—was more of a pre-attack cue, or so the hawk had realized, Dinets, a zoologist now at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told me. On weekday mornings, when pedestrians would activate the signal during rush hour, roughly 10 cars would usually be backed up down a side street. This jam turned out to be the perfect cover for a stealth attack: Once the cars had assembled, the bird would swoop down from its perch in a nearby tree, fly low to the ground along the line of vehicles, then veer abruptly into a residential yard, where a small flock of sparrows, doves, and starlings would often gather to eat crumbs—blissfully unaware of their impending doom. The hawk had masterminded a strategy, Dinets told me: To pull off the attacks, the bird had to create a mental map of the neighborhood—and, maybe even more important, understand that the rhythmic ticktock of the crossing signal would prompt a pileup of cars long enough to facilitate its assaults. The hawk, in other words, appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is, with all due respect, more impressive than how most humans use a pedestrian crosswalk. Cooper's hawks are known for their speedy sneak attacks in the wild, Janet Ng, a senior wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told me. Zipping alongside bushes and branches for cover, they'll conceal themselves from prey until the very last moment of a planned ambush. 'They're really fantastic hunters that way,' Ng said. Those skills apparently translate fairly easily into urban environments, where Cooper's hawks flit amid trees and concrete landscapes, stalking city pigeons and doves. That sort of urban buffet seems to have been a major incentive for this particular Cooper's hawk, Dinets, who published his observations of the bird in Frontiers in Ethology, told me. One of the (human) families in the neighborhood regularly dined outdoors in the evening, leaving a scattering of food scraps on their front lawn that would routinely attract a group of small birds the next morning. But the hawk needed perfect conditions to successfully dive-bomb that flock: enough cover, from a long-enough line of cars, to attack unseen. That scenario would play out only on weekday mornings, when both foot and car traffic were heavy enough that the crosswalk signal would stall lines of cars down the streets. Over several months, Dinets noticed that the bird seemed to have figured out this complex system of ifs, ands, or buts. The hawk appeared only when the necessary degree of congestion was possible. And only after the pedestrian-crossing signal was activated would it ready itself for an attack—perching in a nearby tree to wait for the backlog of cars that it knew would soon manifest. Then, only after the queue stretched long enough to totally conceal its path, the bird would head toward its prey. The crosswalk signal seems to have been key to this plan: The hawk could predict with startling accuracy how well cloaked it would be—and, thus, the success of its attack. 'The hawk understood the connection,' Dinets told me. That's hard to prove without experimentation, beyond Dinets's observation of this single bird—but that this hawk figured out the chain reaction that this signal could set off, under weekday-morning conditions, is definitely plausible, several researchers told me. Plenty of animals, including other types of birds, have proved themselves savvy in human environments. Pigeons, for instance, wait for humans to turn on drinking fountains, then sip the water. Ng has spoken with farmers and ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan who have seen hawks use the sounds of gunshots during gopher hunts as a cue that a feast is impending. And crows have been spotted dropping hard-shelled nuts into roads so that cars will crack them open. Still, Ng, who wasn't involved in the observations, told me that this hawk's feat is impressive, even if no other bird ever replicates it. The hawk clued into a human signal, in a human system, that was multiple steps removed from its target. Managing these attacks required a degree of foresight, a mental map of the neighborhood, even a sense of a human week's rhythm—understanding, for instance, the difference between weekday rush hours and weekend lulls. The bird also appears to have picked up on all of this relatively quickly: Many Cooper's hawks spotted in cities come to urban areas only for the winter, which hints that this one may have conjured its plan of attack as a recent immigrant to the area. Generally speaking, the faster a creature learns something new, the more cognitively adept it is likely to be, Joshua Plotnik, a comparative-cognition expert at Hunter College, told me. And this hawk managed all that as a juvenile, Ng pointed out—still in the first couple of years of its life, when most Cooper's hawks 'are just not good at hunting yet.' A common cause for mortality at this age, she said, is starvation. But maybe the most endearing part of this hawk's tale is the idea that it took advantage of a crosswalk signal at all—an environmental cue that, under most circumstances, is totally useless to birds and perhaps a nuisance. To see any animal blur the line between what we consider the human and non-human spheres is eerie, but also humbling: Most other creatures, Plotnik said, are simply more flexible than we'd ever think. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
23-05-2025
- General
- Atlantic
The Most Ingenious Hawk in New Jersey
In November of 2021, Vladimir Dinets was driving his daughter to school when he first noticed a hawk using a pedestrian crosswalk. The bird—a young Cooper's hawk, to be exact—wasn't using the crosswalk, in the sense of treading on the painted white stripes to reach the other side of the road in West Orange, New Jersey. But it was using the crosswalk—more specifically, the pedestrian-crossing signal that people activate to keep traffic out of said crosswalk—to ambush prey. The crossing signal—a loud, rhythmic click audible from at least half a block away—was more of a pre-attack cue, or so the hawk had realized, Dinets, a zoologist now at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told me. On weekday mornings, when pedestrians would activate the signal during rush hour, roughly 10 cars would usually be backed up down a side street. This jam turned out to be the perfect cover for a stealth attack: Once the cars had assembled, the bird would swoop down from its perch in a nearby tree, fly low to the ground along the line of vehicles, then veer abruptly into a residential yard, where a small flock of sparrows, doves, and starlings would often gather to eat crumbs—blissfully unaware of their impending doom. The hawk had masterminded a strategy, Dinets told me: To pull off the attacks, the bird had to create a mental map of the neighborhood—and, maybe even more important, understand that the rhythmic ticktock of the crossing signal would prompt a pileup of cars long enough to facilitate its assaults. The hawk, in other words, appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is, with all due respect, more impressive than how most humans use a pedestrian crosswalk. Cooper's hawks are known for their speedy sneak attacks in the wild, Janet Ng, a senior wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told me. Zipping alongside bushes and branches for cover, they'll conceal themselves from prey until the very last moment of a planned ambush. 'They're really fantastic hunters that way,' Ng said. Those skills apparently translate fairly easily into urban environments, where Cooper's hawks flit amid trees and concrete landscapes, stalking city pigeons and doves. That sort of urban buffet seems to have been a major incentive for this particular Cooper's hawk, Dinets, who published his observations of the bird in Frontiers in Ethology, told me. One of the (human) families in the neighborhood regularly dined outdoors in the evening, leaving a scattering of food scraps on their front lawn that would routinely attract a group of small birds the next morning. But the hawk needed perfect conditions to successfully dive-bomb that flock: enough cover, from a long-enough line of cars, to attack unseen. That scenario would play out only on weekday mornings, when both foot and car traffic were heavy enough that the crosswalk signal would stall lines of cars down the streets. Over several months, Dinets noticed that the bird seemed to have figured out this complex system of if s, and s, or but s. The hawk appeared only when the necessary degree of congestion was possible. And only after the pedestrian-crossing signal was activated would it ready itself for an attack—perching in a nearby tree to wait for the backlog of cars that it knew would soon manifest. Then, only after the queue stretched long enough to totally conceal its path, the bird would head toward its prey. The crosswalk signal seems to have been key to this plan: The hawk could predict with startling accuracy how well cloaked it would be—and, thus, the success of its attack. 'The hawk understood the connection,' Dinets told me. That's hard to prove without experimentation, beyond Dinets's observation of this single bird—but that this hawk figured out the chain reaction that this signal could set off, under weekday-morning conditions, is definitely plausible, several researchers told me. Plenty of animals, including other types of birds, have proved themselves savvy in human environments. Pigeons, for instance, wait for humans to turn on drinking fountains, then sip the water. Ng has spoken with farmers and ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan who have seen hawks use the sounds of gunshots during gopher hunts as a cue that a feast is impending. And crows have been spotted dropping hard-shelled nuts into roads so that cars will crack them open. Still, Ng, who wasn't involved in the observations, told me that this hawk's feat is impressive, even if no other bird ever replicates it. The hawk clued into a human signal, in a human system, that was multiple steps removed from its target. Managing these attacks required a degree of foresight, a mental map of the neighborhood, even a sense of a human week's rhythm—understanding, for instance, the difference between weekday rush hours and weekend lulls. The bird also appears to have picked up on all of this relatively quickly: Many Cooper's hawks spotted in cities come to urban areas only for the winter, which hints that this one may have conjured its plan of attack as a recent immigrant to the area. Generally speaking, the faster a creature learns something new, the more cognitively adept it is likely to be, Joshua Plotnik, a comparative-cognition expert at Hunter College, told me. And this hawk managed all that as a juvenile, Ng pointed out—still in the first couple of years of its life, when most Cooper's hawks 'are just not good at hunting yet.' A common cause for mortality at this age, she said, is starvation. But maybe the most endearing part of this hawk's tale is the idea that it took advantage of a crosswalk signal at all—an environmental cue that, under most circumstances, is totally useless to birds and perhaps a nuisance. To see any animal blur the line between what we consider the human and non-human spheres is eerie, but also humbling: Most other creatures, Plotnik said, are simply more flexible than we'd ever think.
