I posted this on Facebook a few hours ago:

“Ten years ago, we all came together. Today, I have been knitting a second warm hat for the people in Vermont who lost–belongings, for the most part, but still, the comforts of home, gone. I will never be a firefighter, but I can at least try to be a flood fighter.”

This time it’s more of Judy Sumner’s yarn, knitted with a strand of navy merino/cashmere 50/50. I want it warm and I want it soft. It’s something I can do about it and in honor of Judy’s good name.

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Coopernicus. I do think that would make a great name for him. I saw my male Cooper’s hawk this evening! After lamenting to my daughter on the phone minutes before that it had been awhile. He was standing on the barbecue grill, watching the birdfeeders, watching me, twitching his tail side-to-side and shuffling foot to foot, perhaps unsettled by my having moved. A moulting flank feather was prominently askew–here, let me brush that cowlick for you.

There is a point on the back of the awning pole where the squirrels have recently learned to try to tear a seam in my taped-up parchment paper, just enough to get a toehold they can leap to the feeder from. Word got out fast; the flashmobs returned. I finally put a chair back under the Brome yesterday and that brought an abrupt stop to that behavior again.  Curious, that.

And so, considering the supersoaker briefly, I decided to ignore the black one gleaning on the ground; it’s Sunday, let him alone. It’ s just one and he’s behaving. Should he hop up on the chair and up to the feeder, he’d be coming from immediately below it: no swinging, no seed, no waiting crowd hoping for the pinata to spew, cage closed. Have a good meal, little guy.

His sudden scurrying later caught my eye and that’s what got me to turn to see. (And if I’d opened that glass door and used that soaker it never would have shown up.)

I held obediently still now for the hawk. He eyeballed me, then the feeders again, doing the head bob that helps a bird judge distance just before takeoff. I thought there was still an oblivious finch on my daughter-in-law’s feeder and chanced a glance behind me.

At long last he swooped–doing a sharp turn, to my surprise, not around a feeder but around the exact point on that pole to see if that squirrel was hiding on the tear-the-paper spot.

Nope. But it was a clear sign that he’d been studying their behaviors closely.

Blink and he was gone. Such a beautiful, beautiful bird, lit up in the lowering sun, blue- and near-white faced and chestnut brown, then bluegray wings wide to the wind, flying free.