The Bird of Prey Versus The Window Incident

A Stunning Encounter!

One summer day I was hulling an obscene amount of strawberries when a loud thunk roused me from my ever-constant singing. My kids were both still pretty small at the time, and they both ran into the kitchen and blurted out;

"Mama! What the heck was that?"

Being a curious lot, we of course ran outside to inspect the noise. I wasn't too concerned about it being something too bad, as a goat or two was known to escape their barnyard confines and peep through the windows occasionally.

Imagine my surprise when I looked into the grass below my dining room window and spied a young raptor lying stunned on the ground. The poor thing was puffing in distress and obviously stunned, but what concerned me the most was the gaggle of felines that were congregating around the distressed bird like a pack of lions examining a mortally wounded zebra. This most certainly would not do. I mean, I keep quite a few cats on the farm for rodent control, but that is an occupation that the raptors of the air are quite good at as well. I didn't want the cats to engage in a revenge vendetta as a form of retribution regarding the destruction that their kind have faced at the talons of larger members of the raptor family, so I quickly intervened.

I had a dish towel slung over my shoulder, and I walked up to the downed bird. It responded to my approach with a rather rude hiss.

"Oh, do shut up!" I told it harshly as I carefully draped the towel over its fast breathing form.

I may not be an expert regarding birds of prey, well birds of any kind really, with the exception of domestic poultry, for I have handled thousands of baby chicks during my tenure at my friend's feed store. There have also been many years on the farm that I have wrangled chickens, turkeys, quail, chukkar, guineas, and even a stray peacock. With that said, I felt confident picking up the shocked bird. I carefully placed it on top of my woodshed roof, out of cat range, and carefully removed the towel from it's head.

I am going to believe that the hiss that I received in return was a thank you for saving me from being a cat appetizer, but who knows?

Within fifteen minutes our friend had gotten up, shaken out its wings, and returned to the air where it belonged. I was happy that it wasn't too injured, as I would have called in an expert to deal with that situation. We have some pretty cool wildlife people in our neck of the woods.

As I am not an amateur ornithologist by any means, I am not entirely sure what species of raptor our guest was. At first, I thought it was a Peregrine Falcon, for it was pretty small in stature, but I am not too sure with that assessment. It was far to small to be a Red Tail Hawk, as I know them pretty well, for one decided to rip the head off of one of my laying hens right in front of me and shoot fecal matter in my general direction as it took off from committing that crime. So maybe one of you Steemians know what this fellow is for sure?

And as always, the image in this post was taken by the author on her strawberry juice and feather dander covered iPhone.