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I was going to blog about watching “Up” last night, or trying to, but when I opened the drapes on the living room windows this morning I got a surprise. A large hawk was sitting on the ground underneath one of the bird feeders. At first I thought she was a young Red-Tail, because of the size, but it was a Cooper’s Hawk, all streaked with her I’m-a-teenager-feathers. But she is the second young Cooper’s hawk that is frequenting our yard this year that is that big and beefy. I’ve never seen them this big. I expected the hawk to fly, but not only was it totally not spooked by me suddenly opening the drapes and being in the window only about eight feet away, but the two squirrels that were feeding on seed underneath the feeder were totally ignoring the hawk. They were about two feet away from the hawk, and though their body language said they were a little more tense than usual they continued to feed, and one squirrel got within a foot of the hawk. What did the hawk do? Nothing. It stood there putting it’s head to one side and then the other, and even turned her neck so she was looking upside down at the world, but she made no move for the squirrels. I watched them for at least five minutes, wondering what the heck was going on. I began to look at the hawk and try to see if it was injured, then it rustled it’s wings and turned it’s back letting me see perfectly formed wings. There was no obvious problem other than it’s feathers were less well-groomed than an adult hawk’s would be. Then movement caught both her eye and mine. A squirrel nearly half the yard away ran, and the hawk did this beautiful gliding dive just inches from the ground. The question of whether it could fly was answered. Not only could she fly, but she was breathtaking. The squirrel darted to one side of the house and I lost them as she made a diving swoop.

I opened the front door, very carefully not wanting to spook her off a kill that she might need very badly, young hawks can actually starve to death learning to hunt. But I didn’t see the hawk, or a squirrel. I saw my neighbor getting back from his early morning jog in his yard looking up at something. He saw me, and pointed to the big Oak tree in our yard and there she was, big and beautiful and empty-taloned. Then the neighbor startled the squirrel that had taken refuge in one of his trees and it made a run for it. The hawk was off, in that inches glide above the ground going straight for the squirrel like the hand of fate, she was death on the wing, purposeful and inevitable. Sort of . . .

The squirrel tucked itself into a slight hole/depression in another neighbor’s yard. The hawk landed maybe a foot, or less, from the squirrel’s hiding place. We waited for her to do that last hop and take the squirrel, but she didn’t. She seemed completely at a loss as to what to do next. The two of us must have moved just a little too close because she suddenly took wing again in that ground-hugging glide and swept up and over another house and vanished from our sight.

We talked for a few minutes at the boundary between our two yards. I told him about watching her underneath my feeder and we speculated why she hadn’t tried for the other squirrels. Had the other squirrel running triggered the chase reflex like in a cat? Predators are attracted to movement. Was she as puzzled by the unafraid squirrels under the feeder as I was, and she just didn’t know what to do next? But how did the other squirrel know that she wouldn’t kill him when he went to ground? Why didn’t he go up the small tree that was right there and take refuge in the interlacing branches?

My neighbor and I parted company to pondered the early morning Wild Kingdom moment. I picked my way carefully over the soft ground in my high heels, while he made his way up his driveway in his jogging shoes. I realized I was dressed in my usual, skinny-leg jeans, heels of some kind, and a black t-shirt that read, “The only Hell my Momma, ever Raised.” (I was trying out a new pair of heels before I wore them out instead of my normal boots.) I thought about my college age self in her ill fitting jeans, sweat shirts, tennis shoes, hair in a mass of uncared for frizz. I was fond of sweatshirts back then with Mary Engelbreit & other gentle things on them. I don’t own a sweatshirt now. I look a lot different, better now that I know how to dress myself and do my hair, but more than that the girl I was didn’t know who she was, or who she wanted to be. She only knew she wanted to be a writer and that she loved wildlife. Now, I am a writer, and heels, or no heels, I’ll still track through the mud and the mire to watch a bird, or almost any wild animal do it’s thing. You can Goth up the girl, but the biology-geek remains. Happily, so.