…Besides, it wasn’t up against the fence like the others were.

You know what I was thinking yesterday? I was thinking I needed a good hawk sighting. It had been awhile and I just really needed one.

Well, so do something about it.  And so I filled the second feeder, which I haven’t done much lately; seed in the summer can add up. But it does bring the birds closer in towards the house.

Three finches made a wild scramble off that thing this afternoon and I looked up.

Coopernicus wasn’t trying to chase them. He was simply showing up. He settled down on the nearest tree branch where he could get a good view of that now-prey-free feeder–but also of me.

I communed, he perhaps tolerated, but he was there, watching, considering me and my presence below. I wondered if it was even the same male I had known across these years or if it was his offspring. Hard to know from the distance, but by the behavior, I would say it was him and by the size, definitely male. I radiated all the love I could in thanks, hoping it would somehow make him want to visit more often, and he stayed there looking back at me for several wonderful minutes.

If it was Coopernicus I could have swiveled my gaze to a spot where a finch was hiding in the elephant ear leaves and he would have understood and followed and gone to it if he was hungry–he’s done that before–but there was none; they’d all gotten away safely, and if he’d been hungry he would have followed them in the first place rather than coming to me.

And yet he came.

I felt like all I’d done was give him a half-reason to.

And then having done what I’d asked for, he showed great finery of tail and wing at last and was off to his own matters.