There was an almighty bang on the kitchen window while I was making the tea earlier. Looked up and couldn't see anything, so I thought it must be one of the gurt fat woodpigeons that do that occasionally.
I went out to investigate and found a sparrowhawk on his back, legs in the air,wings outstretched, one eye shut and moving his head from side to side.
The boss turned up at that point. We decided to put him somewhere safer from marauding cats to see if he would recover. Then the movements became less and the other eye shut, and we decided he was a goner.
At which point he flipped over and took off in a steep climb! Beautiful little bird, almost a miniature peregrine.
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Birds in general are very tough. I once saw a swallow swoop into a glass window beak first and fall to the ground stunned. It was away before anyone could pick it up.
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I remember visiting my aunt and uncle's as a kid when their cockatiel flew into the French door glass and fell to the floor stunned, minus a large chunk of his beak!
Both bird and detached beak section were rushed to the vet, where somehow the vet managed to reattach the broken part.
The bird made a complete recovery, and only died a couple of years ago at the ripe old age of 28!
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Birds of various species regularly impact my patio door at back of a through room, mostly youngsters I suspect. They're almost always up an away in seconds though I did find a dead Blue Tit a couple of weeks ago. Feather oil often leaves a very distinct mark on the glass showing the point of impact and ofen clear enough to i/d the species.
They also occasionally either clatter into or try to perch the long wire aerial for my HF receiver. Don't see them first so the impact noise on the mounting makes me jump out of my skin.....
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Common of course, but this one must have been really shifting, never heard such a thump and it wasn't a heavy bird.
I did check out the beak - looked OK, glad that didn't need supergluing. I did think he had broken his neck.
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Had an meeting room booked at work early one morning, and upon entering we had a perfect detailed face and wings picture/engraving of a barn owl in full flight on the window.
It had struck during the night and left natural oil imprints on the window that had attracted dust. There was no corpse in the car park, tho of course the local foxes could have had that away in seconds.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 23 Sep 14 at 15:58
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Bird - starling I think - came down a chimney here once and then got upstairs. We had some beautiful sooty wingprints on the white wall in our bedroom, unfortunately eliminated in building works a few years ago.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 23 Sep 14 at 16:11
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>> Had an meeting room booked at work early one morning, and upon entering
>>we had a perfect detailed face and wings picture/engraving of a barn owl in full flight on the window.
>>
Late Sunday night I nearly had the imprint of an own on the front of my car.
The owl was standing on the white line in the middle of the road, in the middle of the nowhere.
It seemed to just look at me as I gave it as much room as reasonable but did not appear to attempt to fly off.
It certainly surprised me and I am now sorry I did not do a u turn and investigate as it might have been injured.
I hope it was not a prank or a ruse.
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I was painting our garage doors several years ago and a sparrowhawk caught a pigeon and crashed into the doors about 5 meters away. The pigeon flew off at once unscathed, the hawk looked at me for 5 seconds and then took off as well..
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Tough sparrowhawk - Armel Coussine
