In a recent paper, a researcher noted a bird’s surprising urban adaptation: A young Cooper’s hawk used a pedestrian crossing signal to help it hunt more successfully in a busy neighborhood. Vladimir Dinets, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, U.S., and study author, noticed the Cooper’s hawk’s (Accipiter cooperii) behavior while taking his daughter to school. At an intersection, cars traveling on a side street rarely had to wait more than 30 seconds at a red light, unless a pedestrian pressed the crossing button. Then the red light lasted 90 seconds, causing a longer line of stopped cars. The flock of birds feed at house #2. The hawk appeared in the tree in front of house #11 Image courtesy of Dinets, 2025. Those cars backed all the way up to a house where a family regularly ate dinner outside resulting in bits of food on the lawn every day. “They didn’t throw food on purpose they just had a bunch of kids, so they left breadcrumbs and stuff,” Dinets told Mongabay in a video call. Those breadcrumbs attracted a small flock of birds every morning, including house sparrows (Passer domesticus), mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) and European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). The flock of birds caught the attention of a hungry young hawk. It learned the sound of the pedestrian signal meant cars backed up to the house with birds dining on breadcrumbs, which blocked the flock’s view of the approaching hawk. Whenever the hawk heard the pedestrian signal, it flew…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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