Raptors

After work tonight I spied a large bird perched on the edge of the flat roof of our building, about three stories up. Both pigeons and seagulls are plentiful in our area, but something looked different about this bird. Even looking into the sun from a distance, I could see this was no pigeon. The coloring was too dark to be a seagull, even a very dirty one. It could have been one of those giant black crows, but something about the shape was off.

Then it lifted a foot to scoot over on the roof: whoa, those were definitely talons, not chicken feet!

At first, I thought it was a peregrine falcon; the nesting boxes Wisconsin Electric has set up on their plant are only a half mile from our office, as the falcon flies, and have been occupied pretty much every year for the last fifteen years.

But when it finally took off and flew to a neighoring building, I would see a distinct white band across the end of its tail feathers. I think it may have been a Cooper's Hawk.

What do I know? I'm a city girl. What I forget is that we still share the space with the wildlife that originally lived here.