Back Yard Tales

This hawk appeared in our back brush today.

It’s a mature red-tail, imposing in size, probably one of a pair I’ve noticed roosting together a mile or so from here. It may be the one I photographed the other day just as it landed, with its red tail all fanned out.

I’ve never seen a hawk squint before, so I wonder if it has a wounded eye. Maybe the squirrel running up and down the tree just to his left assumed the same thing. A hawk needs stereoscopic vision to hunt. Only one good eye would render it a much less significant threat.

Anyway, here are a few of the squirrel, playing peek-a-boo, and the hawk swiveling its head in quick jerks, trying to take account of the matter.

The squirrel is an intrepid character. I wonder if it’s the same one that figured out the “squirrel-proof” bird feeder we hung experimentally on our rusting swing set. When the squirrel’s weight is full on the bird roost, a lid closes over the seed opening. But somehow this guy found a way around it.

Experiments in gravity. Could you swallow upside down? I’m not sure I could.

Anyway, my 5th grader made this hawk information page today, so I wanted to include it with this post.

We’re becoming a family of avid hawk-stalkers, forever scanning the treetops wherever we go — so much so that when my father passed a dead Cooper’s hawk in the road the other day, he felt he should go back to pick it up and bring it over to show us. Unfortunately he was delayed, and by the time he got back it was gone. I’m not sure if it was merely stunned and had revived, or if someone else picked it up.

I hope it revived and flew away. And there it is again — the irony in my hawk admiration. I really like some of the small, furry critters red-tails eat, and I’m a lover of the songbirds that Cooper’s hawks frequently kill. Yet I find myself pulling for the hawks, too. They are fierce predators, so regal and powerful in their appearance, and yet at the same time so vulnerable. They have to fight for every day of their lives. When the temperature hovered around zero a few days ago, they couldn’t curl up someplace warm and feed on food they had stashed away; they had to hunt, sitting in the cold and studying the ground that yields few clues in our snowless winter. When the winds blow, as they did yesterday, and interfere with a hawk’s ability to steer a safe course around our numerous cars, it still has to eat. These birds seem to belong more to the wild places than to our roadsides, but they are working to fit themselves into the margins of our roads and housing developments and (as my husband saw yesterday) even our shopping malls. So I root for them, not just because they are “magnificent” (as my daughter said) and it’s natural to admire strength, but also because of their determination and will to survive.