Three weekends ago we walked around the block in Casco. Remember, that’s three miles around. About 100 yards from our house, no, make that 200, we saw a bird walking across the road. A ruffed grouse! We’re pretty familiar with them by now. This one was just walking, not particularly concerned about us. We wondered if it was the same one that was hanging around our crabapple tree most of the winter.
On the road at the top of the ridge we heard a bird commotion behind us and saw a couple of crows harrassing a big hawk, either a goshawk or a cooper’s hawk. We thought it was big enough to be a goshawk. A little way further we saw a hawk, either the same one or a different one, on a tree across the field. This second one (or second view of the first one) didn’t impress us as all that big, so we’re calling it a cooper’s. I thought it was eating something — maybe one of the robins that had just come back North.
When we got back to our place there was a grouse walking off our lawn into the woods to the right, on the far side from where we had seen the one crossing the road. Maybe it was the same one and it had just been foraging its way over from the road in the time we had gone all the way around.