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.
Cooper’s hawk
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?
The silhouette of a small accipiter—doubtless one of the resident Cooper’s hawks—swift and silent as it disappears into the trees.
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.
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.
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.
Breezy and cool. The yard rings with oriole song. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops, wings lit up by the rising sun.
The cardinal attacks his reflection then sings in triumph. The Cooper’s hawk skulks out of the woods like a ninja. Today I’m the cardinal.
The fluttery way a Cooper’s hawk flies, skimming the treetops. Later, a jet goes the same way, its contrail just the briefest I and I.
Cold rain thickens into a downpour. A Cooper’s hawk lands in the top of a tall locust and sits preening and shaking, as if taking a shower.
The snow has vanished overnight. Now the Cooper’s hawk is camouflaged again, skimming the ground, slipping through the trees.
A love triangle of squirrels clambering through the lilac, shaking puffs of fresh snow from the limbs. The chattering call of a small hawk.
A high-speed chase through the yard—one Cooper’s hawk tailing another. Woodpecker pandemonium. High above, a jet leaves two blank lines.
A Cooper’s hawk hurtles out of the woods and alights briefly in a yard tree. The assembly-line sound of territorial chipmunks never lets up.