Overcast and cool. I trace the passage of what must be a hawk through the woods by the fast-moving ripple of squirrel alarms.
hawks
Bright sun, cloudless sky. A ways off through the woods, the sudden swoop of a hawk, shining feathers melting back into shining twigs.
Silent wings of a hawk disappearing behind the trees, those skeletons turning green with new life. The neighbors’ hoarse rooster starts up.
A sharp-shinned hawk flying three feet above the ground arrows up into the woods. The faint hint of sun disappears behind thickening clouds.
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.
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.
A dry ticking of junco alarm calls from all directions. A small hawk—Cooper’s or sharp-shinned—hurtles between the snow-plastered trees.
Cloudy and brisk; the woods are full of falling leaves. A sharp-shinned hawk flaps and glides just above the treetops, heading south.
I look up from my laptop just as a Cooper’s hawk launches from the tulip poplar, flashing through the treetops toward its nest of sticks.
The fierce cries of a male kestrel climbing, fluttering and diving over the corner of the field. A crow hurries over to harass it.
The brown thrasher who’s been improvising steadily for half an hour falls silent. A moment later I hear the cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk.
The chickadee hears squirrels chattering alarm at a hawk and freezes in the mouth of her half-finished hole, dark eyes darting all about.
The sound of a single-propeller plane—a rare thing nowadays—draws my eye to a hawk circling a thermal high over the ridge’s glossy snowpack.