The boom of a rifle. A small hawk glides through the trees, lands between me and the faint yellow blotch of sun and waggles its tail.
hawks
10/15/2010
Just as the sun strikes my face, in the corner of my eye a hawk sweeps into the woods. She ghosts past, flared tail orange among the leaves.
9/19/2010
A succession of anxious or querulous calls—nuthatch, crow, Cooper’s hawk, pileated woodpecker—until sunrise reddens the western ridge.
6/29/2010
Commotion from the Cooper’s hawks just inside the woods. One darts out and flies across the field: sleek missile body, thin blades of wings.
6/22/2010
Two crows sail out of the woods with a smaller bird in hot pursuit: the Cooper’s hawk. He lands in the dead elm and ruffles his feathers.
6/11/2010
A rare alarm call from one of the reclusive Cooper’s hawks nesting up in the woods. Sometimes I feel like a trespasser in my own front yard.
5/13/2010
From the moment I come out, the world conspires to wake me up: yesterday, the tulip tree dropped a branch; today, a Cooper’s hawk swoops in.
4/20/2010
Sun filtered by thin cirrostratus clouds. The hawk’s shadow is soft as a squirrel’s tail, but it still sets off all the alarms.
4/12/2010
The Cooper’s hawk swoops down from the woods’ edge into the ditch and dips his beak again and again in its cold clear blood.
3/5/2010
Dawn. The Cooper’s hawk is back, his kak-kak-kak echoing off the icy snow. I scan the trees, a haystack of branches, for that fierce needle.
12/4/2009
A squirrel foraging in the leaves suddenly streaks for the nearest tree, barely escaping the sharp-shinned hawk hurtling through the forest.
11/17/2009
A doe flees the urgent attentions of the resident 6-point, his burp-like grunts. Overhead, the loud cry of a crow chasing a hawk by itself.
10/29/2009
The whining scold-calls of squirrels, agitation of chipmunks, denunciation of a crow: soundtrack for a gray morning with one white hawk.
10/20/2009
Bright lights appear on a storm-felled locust below my parents’ house—reflections from the second-storey windows. A hawk’s swift shadow.