Marion man follows Cooper’s hawks

Bill Reiter's experience as a master falconer has helped him understand and appreciate the Cooper's hawks residing in his Marion neighborhood.

Reiter, who hunted for more than a decade with hawks, falcons and eagles in Wyoming before returning to his native state in 1991, said he considers it his duty to keep track of local raptors.

'There is something otherworldly about them,” he said. 'They are breathtakingly beautiful and can do things that make you think they came from an alien planet.”

Reiter, 68, said he started tracking the Cooper's hawk pair six years ago and got serious about documenting their lives this winter when they began building a nest on a neighbor's property just outside his front door.

So far this year he has taken hundreds of photos and dozens of videos of the hawks and their offspring.

Known for their in-flight grace, speed and skill, Cooper's hawks prey primarily on other birds. Though Reiter has seen them kill prey in flight - their specialty - he has yet to capture a successful hunt on video.

'It happens so fast. You would have to be sitting there with your camera running to have a chance,” he said.

In February, he said, the pair took over an abandoned squirrel's nest in a tall ash tree and began fortifying it with sticks.

Now several offspring - Reiter said the chicks are too jumpy and the foliage too dense for an exact count - are flapping and stretching their wings, preparing to leave the nest.

Since he has been following the pair, they have typically raised four or five chicks per year.

After the chicks fledge, they stick around the neighborhood, learning to hunt and supplementing their diets with handouts from their parents, he said.

Reiter said he studied to become a master falconer in Wyoming and that the test he passed to earn his certification 'was harder than any test I took as a physics undergraduate at the University of Iowa.”

His first raptor hunting partner, he said, was a red-tailed hawk that he captured as a young-of-the-year bird in Wyoming.

'It was unable to fly. It was coated with oil, which I washed off with Dawn dish soap,” he said.

Later that year, in its first hunt, the hawk attacked and killed a red fox, but broke both weakened legs in the process, Reiter said.

After a $1,900 surgery to reinforce her legs with steel pins, that hawk became an excellent rabbit and sage grouse hunter, he said.

One of Reiter's later birds of prey, a rehabilitated golden eagle, attacked and killed a yearling antelope, he said.

When it smacked the antelope in the back of its head with its talons, 'it sounded like Mickey Mantle hitting a home run,” he said.

As is traditional among falconers, Reiter said he released all his avian hunting partners to the wild after they reached sexual maturity.