Office birdsI

In that little picture, you can almost see the hawk that was in my office when I got back from my lunch break. It had been in there for a while, and Justin had hoped that having the lights off would convince it to leave.

I figured out that it was a juvenile Cooper's Hawk, mostly because of the banding on the tail and the striped body (which, along with habitat, seemed good enough to say it wasn't a Sharp Shinned), then spent twenty minutes desperately trying to figure out how to clear it from the rafters. I tried playing Cooper's Hawk sounds, especially nesting ones outside the door, but the damned thing only flitted around to where it could tell I was just holding a laptop to fool it. Eventually, I gave another shot with the darkness, sitting for ten minutes in the black silently, until it finally just took off.

So I go to close the big door that let it in, and as soon as I've done that, a pigeon that was hiding under a half-loft and blanket comes flapping out. My guess is that the hawk chased it in here, and then was looking for it until it decided to split.

But the pigeon's not nearly as peripatetic — it's avoided all my attempts to spook it out, including shooting a bunch of rubber bands at it. It let a couple bounce off before making a half-assed circuit around the room and returning to the same spot. Thanks.