Red light, green light, strike: City hawk times its kill with traffic signal beeps 

“Many animals have learned to use cars for their own benefit, and birds seem to be particularly good at it. Crows drop walnuts, clams, even small vertebrates onto busy roads to have them killed and/or crushed by cars. Carrion-eating birds routinely monitor or patrol busy roads to immediately snatch roadkill,” says Dinets.

“So I’ve been keeping an eye for unusual bird-car play, and that’s why I noticed something interesting going on at a street intersection near my home.”

The story began when Dr. Dinets, a research assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, noticed unusual hawk behavior while driving his daughter to school.

At a quiet intersection, a Cooper’s hawk emerged from a small tree, flew low alongside a line of waiting vehicles, then darted across the road and dove into a residential yard.

Dinets explains, “It turned out that the house targeted by the hawk’s attacks was inhabited by a nice big family that liked to eat dinner in the front yard. Next morning their breadcrumbs and other leftovers attracted a small flock of birds – sparrows, doves, and sometimes starlings. That’s what the hawk was after.”

“But what was really interesting, and took me much longer to figure out, was that the hawk always 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,” he adds.

Critically, the bird appeared to use the auditory pedestrian signal as a hunting cue. With its prey out of sight, the hawk had to rely on memory to time its trajectory and strike location, demonstrating spatial awareness and the ability to associate auditory cues with delayed, complex outcomes.

While many species struggle to survive urbanization, a few, like the Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii), have begun to thrive in cities, though success comes with risks. Cities are hazardous habitats for birds of prey: they must avoid windows, wires, and speeding cars, all while tracking elusive prey in unfamiliar settings.

“It was an immature bird. Cooper’s hawks rarely nest in cities in our area but are common winter visitors. So the bird I was watching was almost certainly a migrant, having moved to the city just a few weeks earlier. And it had already figured out how to use traffic signals and patterns. To me, it seemed very impressive,” remarks Dinets.

Dinets’ study contributes to a growing body of evidence suggesting that wild animals—particularly birds—are far more observant of human behaviors than we tend to assume. This hawk demonstrated how raptors can incorporate human systems into their natural behaviors.

“I think my observations show that Cooper’s hawks manage to survive and thrive [in cities], at least in part, by being very smart,” he concludes.

The study will soon be published in Frontiers in Ethology.