I was going to say oven bird too. Here's something interesting.........I found a dead oven bird on my deck one day. (The only time I've ever seen one, unfortunately). My favorite wildlife artist is Robert Bateman. He had painted a picture of a dead oven bird on the forest floor, and said that many times, they are found dead in the woods, of no apparently injury. The poor guy. (the bird, not Bateman). :)

thanks! (& please, no stones for wasting bandwith for thank-you notes. besides being a southerner, i figured i oughta be polite to follow-up my 1st post & a quick response......!)

I see no orange on this bird, either. I thought, first thing, "Crested Caracara," then "Northern Goshawk," based on its overall coloring and the habitat. The habitat seems wrong for a Caracara, but we had one visiting us in redwood country not long ago, eating at several deer carcasses along Highway One and the bird appeared several weeks later (assuming it was the same one) in Oregon. . . While a Northern Goshawk *would* be feathered farther down on the legs, take a closer look at this photo, then turn to page 190 in the NGFG, and check out the feathering on the legs of the Goshawk (imm) in the painting: the feathers are farther down, yes, but they are sweeping back, as in the bird in the photo. A Northern Goshawk *would* go after prey as large as a squirrel. I sincerely doubt a Cooper's would take prey that large. . .

We have a large creek meandering through our large property. I saw a couple wood ducks one year, but I'm not sure a stream is that attractive to them. I thought of putting up a couple nesting boxes on top of the bank........but don't you think they would need something more stable....like a pond/lake? This creek floods badly a couple times a year. It would never get as high as a nest box, but still........ What do you think?