FreeLists / va-richmond-general / [va-richmond-general] The Unlikely Visitor

["IE Ries" <FEATHERCHASER@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It was around 2PM with a little rain still misting, and I was upstairs in the 
front room where my two budgerigars (some of you might know them as 
"parakeets") spend most of their time.  One was eating and the other was 
sitting on the window jungle gym, serenading me.  Her whistling suddenly got a 
bit on the excited side when her eyes pinned wildly and she hopped down onto a 
lower perch and wedged herself underneath a little climbing ladder, staring at 
something outside.  I looked.  It was a Cooper's Hawk, just a few yards away, 
sitting in a maple tree.
I live in a rental townhouse neighborhood, and there's a little lake on the 
property and a small woods backs up to it.  It's not uncommon for us to see 
Belted Kingfishers, Green and Great Blue Herons fishing the lake, owls and 
hawks flying overhead, and so on (we've got a resident pair of Barred Owls and 
a pair of Redtails living back in those woods).  But I've never seen one land 
in a tree right here in my court.  I watched the Coopie for a minute, and it 
then flew down to the ground and started walking around, looking carefully at 
something between two shrubs.  It flattened itself down a bit and walked in 
under the shrubs.  I raced downstairs, whipped out my binoculars, and opened 
the door...to find that my unlikely visitor was now in the maple tree right 
beside *my* unit, but a yard or two away, staring down at me.  

My jaw dropped, and the bird dived off its perch, sailing back in the direction 
it had been earlier, arcing up and disappeared over the row of units facing me. 
It was gone.  I turned to look up at my second story window:  Morning Sun had 
used the opportunity to take cover, and the windowsill was empty.

Looks like I got lucky...since the rain kept me from going out birding, the 
birds came to me!

Cheers,

Irene in Southside
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