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.
Cooper’s hawk
April 12, 2021
Overcast and cool. Up on the ridge, two or three crows scold a Cooper’s hawk: high-pitched whines, a gargling rattle. The hawk zips off.
April 5, 2021
Lust is in the air: a turkey gobbling in the field, a Cooper’s hawk calling in the woods, and right in front of me, a sunlit cloud of lekking gnats.
April 3, 2021
Cooper’s hawks calling up on the ridge. One of them takes flight: such a small bird to be so strident! And the sky begins to turn white.
March 29, 2021
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.
February 25, 2021
The Cooper’s hawk lands in the yard and the doves scatter—a cacophony of flutes. He flies off east where the icy snow is a blaze of white.
February 23, 2021
Overcast at sunrise. The cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk beginning to think about courtship and nesting, somewhere up in the snowy woods.
January 11, 2021
Cold and gray—the weather, but also me. A sharp-shinned or Cooper’s hawk comes flying low over the trees, clearly keen on getting breakfast.
June 23, 2020
Three Carolina wrens kvetching on and on in the heat. Up in the woods, a Cooper’s hawk chatters twice. Could they be nesting again?
April 8, 2020
The silhouette of a small accipiter—doubtless one of the resident Cooper’s hawks—swift and silent as it disappears into the trees.
April 5, 2020
Again this morning around 10:30, for the fifth day in a row, a Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods. In the hawk’s mind, it might be a song.
April 3, 2020
Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.
March 9, 2020
From up in the woods, the kak-kak-kak call of a Cooper’s hawk. The first question mark butterfly lands among dead leaves and vanishes.
May 21, 2019
Breezy and cool. The yard rings with oriole song. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops, wings lit up by the rising sun.