Hi all,

Today (ironically as I was reading the Tweeters daily digest at lunch sitting at my office computer), I got to witness a lightning-quick attack by an adult Cooper's Hawk.

My office has two windows facing a small greenbelt/stream buffer area in Redmond with a small perennial stream - very birdy and the woods are less than twenty feet away from my windows. I have a couple of feeders set up and have turned the walls of my office into a collage of bird images I've taken from our two-building complex and adjoining areas (including a great marshy meadow and blackberry kacks next to a PSE substation). The combination of my wall images and the view of the bird activity from my office has drawn a lot of interest from the non-birders who work at my company.

The feeders are popular with all the usual suspect species, and I've had several Cooper's Hawks (one juvenile and one or more adults) make a couple of apparently unsuccessful attacks on the feeder flock. Today, the large flock (40-50) of American Goldfinches that visits every day was in the vicinity and working the feeders and trees when birds exploded everywhere. One clonked into my window very hard (the first strike ever, because the windows are visible to the birds). Simultaneously, a larger bird flashed in from the right, its left wingtip literally scraping against the window which had just been bonked, banked a hard right and flew off into the greenbelt at about ten feet off the ground. I was able to see enough to ID it as a Cooper's (still haven't had a Sharpie here yet). The hawk probably got the goldfinch which hit the window because there was no stunned bird outside and there were a couple of feathers wafting to the ground in the seconds following the attack. !
I only
wish I had seen where the hawk was staging his attack so I could have watched the entire drama rather than the last few seconds of it.

I've totaled 50 species in or directly adjacent to our business park since July, with most noted in the three months that we've been located here full time. These include ducks/waterbirds/marsh species like American Coot, Gadwall, Green Heron, Hooded Merganser, Marsh Wren, Wilson's Snipe and Mallard that utilize the two small retention ponds (one perennial, one seasonal) associated with the greenbelt. Raptors seen include Red Tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, Bald Eagle and Cooper's Hawk. Among the remaining species are: a covey of California Quail that are seen almost every day; Brown Creeper; Fox Sparrow; both species of Kinglets; Downy, Hairy and Pileated Woodpeckers; Pine Siskin; Purple Finch; Townsend's Warbler; and Varied Thrush. Probably the 'best' species seen so far was a WHITE THROATED SPARROW that appeared daily at the feeders for about a week in December and then vanished. I did get some passable images of the WTSP during the time he was there. The resident fl!
ock of
Dark Eyed Juncos includes a beautiful male Slate-Colored subspecies.


John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com