The Visitor

Had a bit of a visitor today. I saw him fly by the window and perch on a branch on the tree outside my window. I tripped over a dozen things to get the camera out so I can snap my photos. Turned out he hung out for over three hours! It sat in the exact same spot for the whole time - just moving it's head about. It often looked like it was trying to stay warm during the windy snowfall. The only real movement was when it 'relieved itself'. Talk about volume and distance. I'm glad I wasn't on the sidewalk.

But I do have a bird guide handy. Nice as the guides are, a lot of hawks tend to look the same. My first guess was Broad-Winged, but they don't winter in New England. It could be Sharp-Shinned, but my visitor may be too large for that. My best guess is a Cooper's Hawk. is there an ornithologist in the house?

I put some more pictures on my Flickr Page. A bad scenario for photographs though - the snow gave me a plain white sky. I had to blow out the sky to get any details of the hawk. But it was still pretty cool.

So it hung out for just over 3 hours. The Blue Jays came around and started making a ton of racket. Unfortunately I did't see it fly off. One second it was there and then gone. A look at the wingspan could have helped with identity. Another friend has seen it flying about before - maybe it'll be back again... In the mean time, I of course found a way to spend money on this :) There's an iphone/itouch application that helps identify birds and will play their calls. Pretty cool.