A mid-September Walk

      Tonight, I went for a walk. I did two laps of the "Roanoke Route" ostensibly to take a more holistic approach to my insomnia which has plagued me, most recently, the last four nights. Actually, I was looking for hawks. Why is it when I deliberately look for them, I never see them? I think it's because beautiful things catch you unawares and they are fleeting and elusive. You can never be truly prepared for the harsh beauty of a Hawk of any sort. We are only mortals after all and I've seen the way Red-tailed Hawks soar. They are not of this world. 

     Currently, I am trying to hone my amateur urban hawk-watching skills so, recently, I have watched many videos on YouTube about Red-tailed Hawks and Cooper's Hawks both of which can be found in this urban neighborhood. I saw a video today of a Red-tailed hawk. The videographer captured the hawk in perfect lighting. The camera panned down from imperious, laser eyes and the harsh reality of a sharp beak to a mesmerizing sheen of beautiful, iridescent feathers that are perfect permutations of colors. Shine and sharpness are contained within the same bird. 

      As I walked, I slowed down to scan trees for hawks. Tonight, my informal goal was to not only see a hawk but to confirm to myself that the bird I saw on the ground facing off with a frisky, brave little squirrel back in early June, was as big as my mind thinks it was and that it was, indeed, a Red-tailed Hawk. I saw a  Cooper's Hawk by my apartment recently. They are crow-sized birds. I can't imagine I would see a crow-size bird on the ground and think it's a big bird.  But, back in June, I was a lot more uninformed about hawks than I am now. After a hawk dive-bombed Yoshi and I recently, I consulted with my brother who is a Wildlife Biologist. He said that people vastly over-estimate the size of Hawks when they see them. The Hawk that flew over Yoshi and I and which I saw fairly clearly was not a Red-Tailed Hawk but I thought it was at first because I have only ever seen Red-tailed Hawks around here. It did all happen so fast but I can see the horizontal bands on the tail and the size of the bird quite clearly. I have only ever seen Red-Tailed Hawks around here but a Red-Tailed Hawk would have been too big to fly between the buildings where Yoshi and I were. However, the Roanoke Park area is certainly vast enough to support a bird the size of a Red-Tailed Hawk. There are lots of trees but there is also open grass areas but where I live a bird would have to be smaller and extremely agile. Instead of flying nimbly between trees in the woods, the Cooper's Hawk flies between apartment buildings and houses and huge, older trees and leaves pigeon feathers on the asphalt.

     Tonight, as I scanned trees for either Red-Tailed Hawks or Cooper's Hawks perched within the branches, I noticed it was easy to see through to the tops of trees and, even, on through to the sky. For an instant, I wondered why and, then, I remembered it is mid-September and Fall is upon us. Summer, like the harsh beauty of a hawk dive-bombing you and your dog in a Rose Courtyard, is fleeting. The time of foliage paling and becoming sparse and, eventually, non-existent, is here. Like the pigeon the Cooper's Hawk almost caught amongst the roses, Summer is almost over. It was hot and beautiful and I couldn't see through to the tops of the trees. Tonight, the leaves throughout the trees were like gauzy, fragile lacework and the green yellow-tinged around the edges. I watched two leaves swirl down to the ground as I walked. Leaves littered the surfaces of the sidewalks in direct contrast to the June sidewalks which were clean except for random twigs and sticks.

      From an Urban Bird of Prey standpoint, tonight was a bust. Not only did I not see or hear any Hawks, I didn't even hear a Barred Owl.  The hill on Madison Avenue cuts through a swath of urban forest before it emerges between century old, very expensive houses. Usually, as I walk up the hill, I can hear a pair of Barred Owls calling to each other. Tonight, I heard nothing and I remembered how hard it had been to walk up that hill when I was going through Chemo. What made me think of that was how easy it was tonight and how good it felt to exert my body which was no longer worn out by Chemo drugs. But, Chemotherapy, that is a story for another day. Today, the story is about hawks and feeling good walking up hills. I am home now. I just happened to look out the front windows to the apartment parking lot where Yoshi and I had our impromptu late August encounter with a Cooper's Hawk. When it flew over us, the hawk's wings sounded like a piece of canvas was being snapped sharply over my head by a giant. I definitely felt a quick swoosh of air in the area not too far above my head. I look at the clock on the kitchen wall. It is only 8 o'clock and it is dark outside. Autumn encroaches upon the urban landscape. As the trees thin to barren gray-brown branches with trunks, it will become easier to see Hawks perched in increasingly pallid late Fall and Winter sunshine. 

     As I now lie on my bed wasting more time on the internet, I hear something that eluded me earlier. It is a gorgeous evening so all of the apartment windows are open. I live in a building right off a busy street in an established neighborhood of older and expensive houses. Since the neighborhood is older, there are a lot of big trees that are probably as Old as some of the houses many of which are 100 years old. The swoosh of passing cars is constant but I heard a Barred Owl.