Saturday, December 26, 2015

Distressing accident: death of a hawk

 
 


The top photo is the underside of the wing of a hawk that crashed into a window and broke its neck. The lower photo is a close-up of the delicately and fiercely articulated feet. We must not have been home, because its impact would have made a noise like a car crash--and it was, essentially, a high-speed collision. We had noticed a new hawk in the tree in our front yard the day before. This is, I think, a sharp-shinned hawk; they have a sneaky habit of zooming through our backyard and trying to pick off smaller birds from the bird feeder, which is why we moved the feeder into the patio a few years ago. This one probably mistook a plastic barrier for a clear pathway. The plastic is rather dirty and streaked with cobwebs (not proud of this) so the hawk should have been able to tell that it was not an open passageway. We try to keep the bird feeder from becoming a hawk-feeder, but I'd rather have the live hawk. Hawks maun live, after all.

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