So I pulled into work this morning and parked on the lower level of the parking structure. While I was backing into a spot Chuck pulled in next to me. So we walked up the stairs together talking and not really paying attention to much else.  We got to the top of the enclosed stairway from the lower deck up to the upper deck and outside and started to head out into the parking lot to head to the building when we heard a bird chirp and wings flutter.  I turned and looked back into the stair well to see a small brown bird flying up and down the glass trying to fly out. So I walked back in and came towards it from the side hoping to direct it out to the door so it could fly away. However when I got close it would just fly up the window and not go around the enclosure. When it would come back down the window it would land on a little ledge where I could see its breath on the window. It seemed to be breathing hard, like it had been trying to get out for a while.

So I handed Chuck my apple and badge and decided that I would try to gently grab the bird and bring it outside. I was moving very slowly to try to not frighten the poor bird and give it a heart attack. Well when I went to grab it it flew up the window again. So I slowly moved my hands up the window with it and then back down the window as the little brown bird came down. I still wasn’t touching the bird at this point. I slowly moved my hands in to pick it up and it flew up again. So this time I just left my hands in a cup shape down on the window ledge. Then when the bird came down this time it landed back on the window ledge and as I moved my hands in towards it and it jumped up on my fingers and just sat there. So I picked him up and slowly walked outside with my hands cupped, but just letting the bird sit on my hand.

It was one of the coolest experience I have ever had with a live wild animal! From what I could tell I think it was a pretty mature bird. We see these little brown birds around here a lot, I think they are called song sparrows. He didn’t try to bite me or scratch me or anything. I think he finally realized I was trying to help him. Chuck said it was pretty cool too and we were both very surprised the bird let me pick him up. Afterward we were like, man we should have gotten pictures or a video of that or something. So needless to say I have no pictures to show of this bird encounter. That being said, it looked a lot like this:

Chuck and I have been trying to go for walks around the office building on our lunch break when the weather is nice. Typically we follow this path:

Today when we came back around the front of the building we saw a large bird on the ground behind the pond. As we walked towards it to take a look it flew into a tree that we were walking towards. When it did this we realized it was a rather good sized hawk and it was carrying something in its talons. We decided to see how close we could get and see how big the Hawk was. Turns out it was holding a small bird in its talons and while it was sitting on the branch it was tearing it apart with its beak and eating it. I managed to get about five feet from the branch it was sitting on, which was only about head high, and take the below pictures with my phone (they didn’t come out to well) before the hawk finally started to give low volume screeches to warn me I was too close. After I took a step back it jumped down off the branch and flew off past me, I was surprised to see that it had a wing span of about five feet. That’s the closest I have ever been to a wild hawk, it was pretty cool.

I have uploaded the pictures to the gallery, and they can be found here. I salvaged what I could, but Like I said, they didn’t come out very well.