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Originally Posted by FWK
Alright something about the way the bird appeared to be paralyzed then suddenly sprang to life and flew away was bothering me so I did a little looking. I found several other reports and videos of snake vs hawk encounters and the hawks always showed the same behavior. But I couldn't find any information on hawks playing dead. Anybody heard of such a thing? A snake isn't going to hold on forever, once the constricted bird stops moving the snake will let go and move on. Maybe these birds can play dead to avoid being killed by a snake that is to big to handle?
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Well, I'm a licensed falconer, and I have quite a bit of experience with trapping wild red tailed hawks. And I've had daily interaction with my own hawks for the past 3 years.
Two things are at play here:
1. The hawk was probably half asphyxiated and it took a few seconds to recover.
2. Hawks will go into kind of a shock when they're captured and see no escape. They go out of flight mode, and go into this shock-like state where they won't take their eyes off the predator. They sit frozen, wings out, mouth agape, and often limp and on their backs. It's kind of like a frozen threat display. Once the predator backs off a bit, or gives them enough time, they snap out of it, and go back into flight mode - as you saw when this particular hawk flew off.
Here's a photo of a wild hawk that was trapped less than an hour earlier. She's recovered enough to stand on the glove, which sometimes takes a while. They're kind of limp-noodle for a bit. But, you can see she's still just staring me down instead of trying to escape.
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