“I hope you are doing well, I have enjoyed following along on your blog. I live in Colorado now, and am happy to be out of Florida. The house we are renting backs onto a golf course and there are quite a few birds for my kids\u00a0and I to watch. We have seen a lot of goldfinches, black capped chickadees and various\u00a0finches. There is a group of geese that commute over our house each morning. It is fun. We have seen this hawk? patrolling the area and hanging out on our back fence. It seems sometimes the sparrow is pestering the hawk or the hawk is chasing the sparrows. Anyways tonight we came home and laying in our driveway dead were these two birds both stone dead. Can you tell me the species, and what may have led to their demise? I examined the birds and could find no physical injuries. Though my wife stopped the full autopsy.”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nHis last sentence brought a big smile to my face. Bridger always had a wry sense of humor\u00a0that I enjoyed, he’s curious by nature\u00a0and\u00a0he’s now a practicing oral surgeon so I’m not surprised an autopsy came to mind.<\/p>\n
But the photos were sad to see. I’ll include two of them below.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/coopers-hawk-and-house-finch-resized-bridger-jensen-7666.jpg\")
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Copyright Bridger Jensen – Used by permission<\/em><\/p>\nIn writing back I identified the birds as a Cooper’s Hawk and a female House Finch, suggesting that both birds likely died when the finch panicked as the hawk attacked and then pursued the smaller bird. They must have struck a solid object, most likely a nearby window which birds don’t recognize as being solid. Window strikes by songbirds are very common when they’re attacked by accipiters but most folks don’t realize that the hawk can become a victim of the impact too.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/coopers-hawk-tail-resized-bridger-jensen-7668.jpg\")
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Copyright Bridger Jensen – Used by permission<\/em><\/p>\nIn a different shot the powerful feet and very long toes of the Cooper’s Hawk are evident. They use those feet to snag small birds out of the air and then squeeze them repeatedly until death occurs, unlike falcons who use their beaks to kill prey. And accipiter talons are literally needle-sharp.<\/p>\n
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I’ve kept in touch with Bridger\u00a0over the years but only sporadically. Several of his siblings were also\u00a0very good\u00a0students of mine (as was\u00a0Bridger’s wife, the former Lauren Barth) and every couple of years I run into his mother who I really enjoy visiting with. But I haven’t had any contact with any of them for some time and\u00a0last I’d heard Bridger was still completing his Oral Surgery residency in Florida. So when you read the last paragraph in his second email to me below\u00a0I think my readers know\u00a0me\u00a0well enough to realize why it meant so much to me:<\/p>\n
\n- “I really love my job and love being in CO close to more outdoor activities. Lauren\u00a0and I have four kids now. We spend a lot of time outdoors and my older boys are becoming decent birders, lying fishermen, and complaining hikers. Last Christmas I got them binoculars and\u00a0small bird books, they did a good job and got most birds checked off the list. I’m going to get them the National Geographic book you recommended. Anyways hope you are doing well. I’m sure you have a lot of students that thank you for being a great teacher, but I really enjoyed your classes and feel like they set me off on a great path. Thank you for being a great teacher and making me love the outdoors. I can’t hear Dire Straits or the Eagles and not think of my extra credit points on tests.”<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So\u00a0Bridger loves the outdoors, he obviously appreciates and respects birds, wildlife and nature, he and Lauren are raising their four young children to have similar values and deserved or not he gives me\u00a0some of the credit. What more could an old retired biology teacher ask for?<\/p>\n
If he in fact actually likes<\/em> the music of Dire Straits and the Eagles I’ll have fulfilled my mission!<\/p>\nRon<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of recent emails from a former student truly made my day, despite the sad photos included in one of them.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,380],"tags":[4278,4274,95,4276,2813,4275,4277,3103,655,4273],"class_list":["post-65132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-coopers-hawk-diurnal-raptors","tag-autopsy","tag-bridger-jensen","tag-coopers-hawk","tag-dire-straits","tag-eagles","tag-feet-toes-talons-of-coopers-hawk","tag-hawks-killed-pursuing-birds","tag-highland-high-school","tag-house-finch","tag-window-strikes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/coopers-hawk-tail-resized-bridger-jensen-7668.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gWw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}