There were a couple of obviously sick people on my flights on Saturday and now I’m doing the cold/mild fever thing myself and taking it easy.
This morning, I got an email from my childhood friend Karen (Water Turtles shawl Karen, yes) that, though she didn’t know it and didn’t know I needed it, challenged me to be positive with her simple question, had I seen any good birds lately?
I glanced out the window wistfully, thinking, not since the juvenile Cooper’s swooping hunt in front of me that I will forever associate with Smokey. That was really cool.
Just a few moments ago as I write this, a sense of motion caught my peripheral vision, though, and I turned: there was an adult Cooper’s with its striking blueish and white striped head, regal, huge, that had just landed on the dolly that is outside on the covered porch from where it got left out after hauling something or other back and forth to the car. It was still there because someone (ahem) had mused to herself that it was out of the rain and you know, it might make a possible moment’s perch sometime.
Indeed.
It was facing me. Holding still. Given its size, I’m guessing it was a female. (They’re bigger than the males.) I admired the hawk’s long, wide-striped tail; in the moment I thought that, it casually stretched it wide for me in seeming yawning response, slightly gap-toothed to the left where a feather was growing back in. (Yeah, my hair’s been like that too after last year’s everything…)
It regarded me, turning its head to the side a bit for a closer look. It lifted one foot a little off the cold metal but not high enough to show it was relaxing the way birds do, and then having said hello to cheer me up, took off for the warmth and stealth of the tree branches. Besides, how are you going to catch that squirrel when it’s cowering between the legs of those chairs in the way.
The squirrel reappeared under the feeder almost immediately after the hawk left.
Careful, little guy. We serve breakfast, lunch and dinner here.