Patches of blue sky at sunrise. A red-tailed hawk sits in a high oak limb, pale breast half-camouflaged against the snow that fell in the night.
red-tailed hawk
September 16, 2022
Cold (46F) with thin, high clouds. Black walnuts knocking on the roof. A red-tailed hawk drops in to visit the squirrels.
May 4, 2022
A break in the rain. A vole dashes back and forth in the yard. Through the foggy woods, the pale wings of a hawk hunting for breakfast.
April 27, 2022
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.
October 21, 2021
The last clear morning for a while. A red-tailed hawk flies through the bare birches, trailed by two outraged crows.
April 15, 2021
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.
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 26, 2021
A red-tailed hawk dives at a squirrel just as I come out. Then woodwinds: a V of geese followed by tundra swans. The first killdeer’s cry.
October 14, 2020
The tock-tock-tock of a chipmunk up in the woods, relentless as a metronome. A red-tailed hawk lands in an oak and has a slow look around.
March 22, 2020
The sky unscarred by a single contrail is as blue as I’ve ever seen it. A hawk spirals higher and higher, unthreading gravity’s screw.
November 16, 2019
It’s warm in the sun, though the air is cold. A red-tailed hawk comes in fast and low toward the feeder, pulls up, circles, and flies off.
March 24, 2019
Sun through thin clouds—dim as a lizard’s third eye. A red-tailed hawk drifts past without flapping.
March 12, 2018
Cold and gloomy, but the yard seethes with birds: juncos, cardinals, wren. A hundred yards away, a hawk sits on a limb, bedeviled by crows.
March 9, 2018
New snow blown about by a bitter wind. A red-tailed hawk struggles to gain altitude, mocked by a blue jay doing its best hawk scream.