Bird watching is an all time favorite in our house… but something that has taken a back burner for the past year or two. However, my interest was peaked again this morning as I walked out the back door to take the dogs out! My guess is that my appearance distracted our precious kitty, Jasper, just long enough for his captive friend to make a quick escape… The commotion got my attention and I turned around just in time to notice that this wasn’t one of the typical birds we would see around here! It was rather large, with an extremely long, thin beak… it flew a bit off kilter (probably due to the games Jasper had been playing with him!) straight into the chain link fence and plummeted back to the ground.

We go through this quite often out here in the country… tender hearted Gina trying to rescue Jasper’s “friends”! Though I have to admit my success rate is not as high as I would like… I sure wish he would stick to the mice that he is here to catch!

Larry got the cat in the house so that we could take a few pictures of this unique little bird… we really wanted to find out what kind it was because we had never seen one before!

Here are a few of the snapshots:

American Woodcock

According to the information I found about him, they only fly at night… I surely hope he wasn’t offered the privilege of camping out with Jasper all night! I know he spent a little time in Jasper’s house as there were quite a few feathers in it!

I am glad to say that after a couple of hours of recuperating, he flew off to safety to wait for dusk to safely fly off on a new adventure!