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