My story begins on a cool and crisp December morning, hubby and I were sitting in our office working on our computers, when we heard a thud, like something had hit one of our windows. Now the average person most probably would have jumped to see what it was all about, but because this is a regular occurrence at our place, we didn't hurry to investigate.
As most of you know I live in a rural area. I have shared pictures of birds that frequent our property. Birds of varying breeds shapes and sizes. One of the unfortunate things( I guess it depends on how you look at it) is that we have a lot of windows on our home, very high "A frame" windows in some parts. The unfortunate part is that on a nice clear day the birds can get misdirected and head straight for our windows. On all to many occasions I have gone out to investigate only to find a poor bird laying there dead.
On this particular morning we heard such a sound and as I said we did not go and investigate. It was about an hour or so later I was sitting in the truck waiting for my hubby when I noticed something move in the grass. What's that I ask myself....I haven't seen anything like that before.....I go over to take a closer look......this is what I found......
It would appear it was a Cooper's Hawk that had hit our window. It also appeared that he might have broken his neck. Hubby went into the house and called the Wild Life Rescue to see if we could bring it in and see if there was anything they could do. They agreed and so I went and got a Rubbermaid container and hubby put the bird into the container. The Wildlife center is about 25mins drive from us. It being a Saturday and close to Christmas we were so thankful they were open. We rushed over, but got lost...I kept looking in the back to check on the bird to see if it was alive and indeed it was. But due to us taking a wrong turn and hence delaying our arrival the bird succumbed to his injuries before we could make it to the center. When we arrived at the center they were expecting us, unfortunately we had to tell them the bird had died. They came out and inspected the bird and confirmed it was indeed a Cooper's Hawk. We asked if it was ok if we took it home. My hubby wanted to bury it in our yard as he figures that would have been more home to the bird. And so that is what we did.
He was a magnificent bird, one I may not have been able to see unless it was for it's misfortune of hitting our window.
I learnt a lesson that day. If you hear a thud....go check it out. I feel a bit guilty, we didn't investigate things earlier. I can't help but wonder had we investigate earlier would the bird had a chance to live. We'll never know.
