Greetings,

On a sad note, as I was starting my car to warm up before heading over to my girlfriend’s for dinner, I noticed a dead Dark-eyed Junco next to the car. The bird was fairly fresh, however with the cold keeping it stiff, it is hard to say how long it was dead. The obvious conclusion here is that the bird flew into the side of the vehicle thus killing itself from the impact. The next question would be “why?”. While many assumptions can be made about this, my first thought was that the bird was probably flying erraticaly away from a predator, most probably an accipiter. While walking in the house to store the bird for delivery to a local skin museum, I was told of a hawk flying over the neighbor’s house this morning…perhaps this was the reason for the panic? Hard to say…..

~Chad