Today, during the brief snow flurries – which foretell what is to come tonight — we had a visitor on our windowsill.  As it occasionally happens, a bird flew into our window and needed to sit on the ledge for a while.  It was a strange looking visitor for this former City girl.  Luckily it perched long enough for me to find my camera (on the other end of the house of course).  I took a few photos and then spent some time investigating to determine what strange creature had appeared in our yard.  It looked like a bird of prey so we started there to seek out photos.  We eliminated the owl family and moved on to researching hawks and to our surprise what we have here is a falcon — The American Kestrel falcon to be exact.  Many may know this creature as a sparrow hawk and it supposedly is a very common falcon.  This was my first opportunity to view one up and personal.  He (yes, it’s a male) took an interest in us as well before he flew off to perch on top of a pine tree.  If you want to check for more on this creature, click this link to the Chipper Woods Bird Observatory.