This morning I was looking out my window and there were several white-throated sparrows eating dandelion seeds. I got to look at them pretty good for awhile. I'm thinking the bird that hit the window was a juvenile white throated sparrow. The feather patterns are similar, and the orange tint I was seeing might have been the juvenile version of the yellow at the start of the eye line. I have had so many birds in my yard, eating various weeds recently. I guess there is something good coming from our lawn mower breaking down. haha I'm tempted to leave alot more of the yard grow up, but there's things like septic field, geothermal lines, etc. to have to worry about. Anyhow......I think my mystery is solved and I can move on to the next one! :)

another shot

It most likely is an older baby cardinal. The photo above is a very young bird. What you have described sounds like a bird that is at an age between the fledgling photo above and an adult. We have many here in NJ and it took me awhile to figure out what they were. It takes some time for there color/markings to come in. They have a similar pitch to their call as an adult, but the pattern is a "tweet tweet tweet" or "peep peep peep". They are very vocal when hungry and the parents are usually close by. We had a mating pair that had a female and male baby. The father would constantly be feeding the male, but the female baby was so much more self-sufficient. She would eat seeds off the ground with her mother. Eventually the mother went over and gave the male baby a peck. It was hilarious!!

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. . .