Another hard loss for the Minnesota Birding Community. Last week, losing Bud Tordoff was hard, but combine that with the way too early loss of one of my favorite vets at The Raptor Center makes this an almost unbearable Monday morning indeed.

Jane Goggin was young, she was gifted--a rare vet not only with a sensitive bedside manner with birds, but also with humans. She didn't like to be in the forefront, she was quiet and it was darn hard to ever get photos of her, but talented though she was, the limelight was not her objective. Chances are good that if you ever communicated with one of the vets at TRC, it could have been Jane, she worked in clinic for over 16 years. She was part of some of my most memorable blog entries. Above is one of the very few photos I have of her, test flying a Cooper's hawk. This was from the day she and fellow vet Lori Arent allowed some volunteers to watch them test fly a young Cooper's hawk that was recovering in clinic--the Coops almost clotheslined us.

She was so generous for information and never made lay people like myself feel stupid. Another memorable moment was the day she and Dr. Juli Ponder (above) explained about young eagles with maggots in their ears--read it here, but be warned, it's kinda gross.

Jane cared about conservation of birds and cared for individual birds, their comfort when injured was always a priority. She will be greatly missed. TRC has put up a lovely tribute here.