Last night I picked up a friend of mine and we headed to Shoreview for a meeting of our Minnesota Master Naturalist group. As we turned off of Highway 96 we saw a big white bird dive at a bald eagle that was flying by.  The eagle swerved suddenly to avoid impact and flipped over and flew upside down for a couple seconds. Two white gulls flew by but the bird that attacked the eagle was bigger than a gull and the wings were hawk wings; not gull wings. We parked, grabbed the binoculars and the bird book, and went to look again. We stood in front of the library looking into the space above the intersection when the eagle flew by again and the white hawk attacked it again. I had the hawk in my binoculars for a long time but I cannot tell you what kind of hawk it was.  Perhaps it was a leucistic red tailed hawk or some other kind of hawk.  I thought it looked like an angel. After that excitement we went into our meeting where Bob Dunlap spoke about his birding experiences. As a boy he got hooked on birding and loved to travel around and look for birds. His passion for birds influenced his mother, Jan Dunlap, to write mystery novels about birds. He showed us a picture of his wedding where he had a board up so people could write down what birds they saw at the event. Somebody wrote California Condor and we know that wasn't right. This speaker had a great sense of humor.  He spoke of being a millennial. Almost all of us were Baby Boomers.  I had always thought of my parents as belonging to the greatest generation but according to Bob, they were in the silent generation (1925-1945). That was a new term for me. He gave us data on bird counts. At one time Cardinals were rare birds found only in the farthest southern counties of Minnesota.  Now we have Cardinals in every state in Minnesota. House finches were rare and now they are all over.  Turkeys were rare and moved in from the west across the state. At one time Eurasian collar doves were non-existent but I believe they will be everywhere in the next ten years or so.  I just hope they don't drive out the Morning Doves. At the end of his talk he showed us a video of a birding excursion to Columbia.  He had gorgeous photos and videos of toucans, humming birds, slyphs, and wood peckers. I really wish I had gone on that 12 day trip because they saw almost 400 species of birds plus howler monkeys and turtles and snakes. Someday I might go to Columbia on a birding trip.