No Hawks Today

 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 shape of a right angle. I imagined the Hawk that had plucked those feathers from the pigeon immediately after trapping it to the ground. I looked up and around but could see no hawks but they're definitely around. Briefly, I wondered when the pigeon had met its untimely end. Maybe, it was an old pigeon and it was their time to pass on from this world. I imagined the Hawk zapping down from the sky in the cold, more desolate early morning hours.