What's that up in the tree?

Birding has been rather slow the past two weeks and I was wondering what I had done to scare the birds away from our feeders. Today I may have discovered the reason. As I turned to look out my view window a rather large bird flew into the tree in our back yard. Normally my camera is right here and all I have to do is grab it and turn it on. Not today, quickly I got up and hustled to the dining room to retrieve the camera and on my way back turned the camera on and stopped at the kitchen window to aim the camera at what we now believe to be a Cooper's Hawk. I took one quick shot and aimed to take another shot and he started into flight once again. The two picters are rather poor quality, but they do prove that our Normal Back Yard had a hawk visit.

Talking to Birds Unlimited later today we learned that indeed a Cooper's Hawk would cause fear in smaller birds and maybe even cause them to look elsewhere for food until they felt safer. I know that I have spotted a hawk in our yard at least twice before today. The first time was in late September as one landed on our fire place chimney and flew off before I could take his picture. Then last Saturday on flew into the same tree out back. That time I had the camera ready but when I turned to find the camera he flew off.

One of the members of the Central Illinois Birding Forum has a blog web site and she has neat pictures of Bald Eagles which nest near the Illinois river. Her blog can be found at: http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/