Is This Bird Looking for Bookworms?

Visitor seems to be ruffling no feathers

It doesn't take a hawk eye to spot the strange visitor at the Library of Congress.

She's a Cooper's hawk according to a library staffer who is also a birder.

The bird is in the library's majestic Main Reading Room. She was first noticed Wednesday.

Staffers theorize she may have gotten in through a broken window high in the building.

Efforts to convince it to leave -- including playing a clip of a Cooper's hawk's call -- have so far been fruitless, but a trapper from the Northern Virginia Raptor Conservancy is on the case, NBC Washington's Tom Sherwood reported. Traps in the ceiling have mice and pigeons as bait, but if the hawk has eaten recently, it could last a few days before running out of steam.

So far, staffers say, the hawk appears to be in good health and has not bothered anyone in the building.

The library wants to release the hawk back into the wild unharmed.


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