The holiday silence continues. A sharp-shinned hawk darts through the trees, barely bigger than a dove but with wings that don’t whistle. The sun comes out from behind a tree.
accipiter
Still, with a flat-white sky. The throat-rattles of a crow chasing off a sharp-shinned hawk. The black birches fill with kinglets.
Light clouds in the east, dark clouds in the west, and everywhere the hush of the wind. A hawk goes by too fast for the squirrels to notice.
Did it really rain hard last night, or did I dream that? The creek seems no louder. High against the clouds, a small hawk flaps and circles.
Bright sun on bare trees, whose discarded leaves still glow. Squirrels scold on and on. Finally a hawk-shaped shadow detaches from an oak.
A small hawk flies through the forest in steady rain, perches in the crown of an oak for several minutes, and flies on. The wind picks up.
Two crows tail a small hawk on a high-speed chase through the trees, twisting and turning. It loses them and climbs into the clouds.
Overcast and breezy. The blue-gray back of a small hawk—sharp-shinned or Cooper’s—darting through the yard. A few raindrops tap on the roof.
A sharp-shinned hawk keeps chasing flickers in the yard; they yell at the effrontery and circle right back each time. A wren chatters alarm.
Sun shining through fog and the growing tents of fall webworms. A sharp-shinned hawk sits atop the dead elm, his head swiveling all around.
The porch is sleek with blown rain. Just past dawn I glimpse a small hawk circling low over the trees—long-tailed accipiter, a dark cross.
Snow has turned all the lower limbs into wide white feathers, but treetops are bare against the blue. From somewhere in between, the hawk.
An urgent, nasal call: the Cooper’s hawks are back. The female glides into a tall pine while the male appears and disappears among the oaks.
Gray sky. A gray breast feather floats down and lands on the snow. Ten minutes later, a sharp-shinned hawk appears in the big maple.