No Contest

As soon as I saw the competitors I knew how the contest was going to end. And it was not going to be pretty, either.
An American Goldfinch, in this corner, was calmly taking niger seed from the tube feeder. The single-digit temperatures did not seem to diminish its appetite, although there was no others of its kind in sight.
In that corner, about 10 feet away, perched Mr. Cooper’s Hawk. He, too, was looking for lunch and the goldfinch seemed to be his meal of choice.
When the goldfinch saw, or sensed, the presence of the hawk, it froze. The hawk, and I noodled this out by moving around inside the house to check his sight lines, was unsure if there was a bird on the feeder or not. The wind would ruffle the finch’s feathers and the hawk would perk up. The tube feeder, however, was swaying in the breeze, just enough to create a bit of uncertainty.
The goldfinch held its ground. No move is a good move in a situation like this. The standoff continued for several minutes. The hawk would occasionally turns its attention elsewhere until finally it launched itself from the branch and rocketed off in the direction of a flock of starlings.
Goldfinch wins!