2/17/2024
Patches of blue sky at sunrise. A red-tailed hawk sits in a high oak limb, pale breast half-camouflaged against the snow that fell in the night.
Patches of blue sky at sunrise. A red-tailed hawk sits in a high oak limb, pale breast half-camouflaged against the snow that fell in the night.
Cold (46F) with thin, high clouds. Black walnuts knocking on the roof. A red-tailed hawk drops in to visit the squirrels.
A break in the rain. A vole dashes back and forth in the yard. Through the foggy woods, the pale wings of a hawk hunting for breakfast.
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.
The last clear morning for a while. A red-tailed hawk flies through the bare birches, trailed by two outraged crows.
Shadbush blossoms merge with the sky. A red-tailed hawk drops in and is quickly driven off by the Cooper’s hawk, who lands one good strike.
Cold and blustery. The kak-kak-kak of a Cooper’s hawk, who comes rocketing out of the woods a second later with a redtail in pursuit.
A red-tailed hawk dives at a squirrel just as I come out. Then woodwinds: a V of geese followed by tundra swans. The first killdeer’s cry.
The tock-tock-tock of a chipmunk up in the woods, relentless as a metronome. A red-tailed hawk lands in an oak and has a slow look around.
The sky unscarred by a single contrail is as blue as I’ve ever seen it. A hawk spirals higher and higher, unthreading gravity’s screw.
It’s warm in the sun, though the air is cold. A red-tailed hawk comes in fast and low toward the feeder, pulls up, circles, and flies off.
Sun through thin clouds—dim as a lizard’s third eye. A red-tailed hawk drifts past without flapping.
Cold and gloomy, but the yard seethes with birds: juncos, cardinals, wren. A hundred yards away, a hawk sits on a limb, bedeviled by crows.
New snow blown about by a bitter wind. A red-tailed hawk struggles to gain altitude, mocked by a blue jay doing its best hawk scream.