SPRINGFIELD, MO. — I heard titmice scolding when I stepped out for the newspaper. I looked up at the big tree across the street and saw a raptor’s silhouette. I hurried back inside for my binoculars.

It was a Cooper’s Hawk, probably a female. This much I could tell by the bird’s bulk — she was larger than the crows that sometimes perch in the same branches. She wore the reddish bars of an adult across her breast, but her eyes were still yellow. She appeared to be molting her tailfeathers, which were of various lengths and rather scruffy-looking.

A thump sent me back through the front door, worried that my patient had fallen. But he was fine, and he asked what I’d been looking at. I answered his questions as I started cooking breakfast. Could a Cooper’s Hawk take one of the baby turkeys he sometimes sees nearby? Probably so.

In other news, I and the Bird #6 was published last night. Check it out!

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