I was sitting here in our home office today working away. Nice albeit cloudy weather and I had the windows open. Several hundred migrating birds were outside making a huge racket, pleasant enough to listen to. Like someone threw a switch all the birds stopped. Not a single peep. It was eerie enough that the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Several seconds later I hear a loud thump, kind of like hearing a shotgun go off indoors from outside the building. As I am getting up my wife calls out from the other side of the house, asking the same question I was thinking, WTF?
In alert mode, I look around towards the noise and there on my doormat is a good sized hawk, about 3 foot wingspan and it is out cold. It landed about 5 feet away from the dog and he doesn't know what to think, just staring at it. I get to the front door and start to examine the critter. About that time it comes to, takes a couple of staggering steps toward the edge of the porch and flies off. I had to collar the dog because as soon as the thing stirred the dog was much more interested. Hopefully the bird was okay, I think so since it flew off and I didn't see any blood. Apparently you can't fly through a glass storm door unless you try really hard. I think it was a Cooper's hawk. No pic since the camera was on the front seat of the car. I've been trying hard all week to capture some good photos of the bald and golden eagles that are running rampant around here and then a raptor delivers itself when I have no camera!
