Anne's Blog

   A cawing racket of crows entered my subconscious. Fleetingly, I thought that if I heard that many crows in the summer, I would start looking up.  I was standing on the shaded northwest corner of a busy intersection. It was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon and it had been a sunny day.  The sun was setting behind me. Straight ahead of me up about a quarter of a mile ahead there was a stand of bare-branch trees high on what I would imagine were once ancient river bluffs. Insipid late November shone on their scrawny nakedness. The urban Vista was bland and uninspiring and I felt completely disconnected from the gray-brown aura. Cars went north. Cars went south.      Informally, I gave up looking for hawks in this neighborhood for the year several weeks ago when I hadn't seen any in awhile. As an amateur urban bird-of-prey watcher, I, periodically, look up in most of the trees and higher structures when I walk in this neighborhood. Yesterday, I saw one ...

 It's a lot nicer outside today than it was yesterday or the day before so Yoshi & I went for a walk around the block. I looked up into many trees but saw no hawks. I would have been okay with a far-off sighting of a Red-tailed Hawk but I, specifically, looked in tall, barren trees close to the sidewalk for Cooper's Hawks perching in wait. We went by the yard where, several years ago, I saw what I thought was a Peregrine Falcon dive bomb an unlucky robin to the ground. It seemed to look me in the eye before it lifted off with the robin still trapped in its talons. In retrospect and after a couple more years of observing hawks in this neighborhood, I realize that was a Cooper's Hawk. The thing with hindsight in life and urban bird-watching is that time can refine your perception of an event. Yoshi and I headed home. On the corner of 37th and Southwest Trafficway, I saw two small pigeon feathers. They looked scrawny and one was lying on top of the other one in roughly the...