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Date: | Sat, 21 Sep 2013 17:10:23 -0400 |
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In late morning today, I was alerted to the presence of a sizable dead
bird lying near the edge on a first floor roof of a home on the edge
of Norwich village. A homeowner kindly invited me to look down through
his 2nd floor window from which without binoculars at several yards
distance I could see on a roof below a feathered carcass which
resembled a medium sized hawk with a relatively short tail. It was not
until later in the day when the carcass had been retrieved from the
roof and then shown to me that I realized that the bird was a
relatively freshly killed Ruffed Grouse which had met an unfortunate
end.
I had previously seen situations where Ruffed Grouse had died flying
into windows close to the ground. The presumption has been that a
grouse on the ground looks upward, sees open sky reflected in a window
above, then flies up in that direction and fatally strikes the window.
The situation today was unusual in that presumably the bird struck a
2nd floor window, high off the ground, and then fell backward onto the
edge of the first floor roof below.
George Clark
Norwich, VT
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