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Chill Beauty
When I got up yesterday morning and peered out the window, the air was thick with moisture. As day dawned, it became apparent that the moisture had sugar-coated the world.
We haven’t taken many walks lately. We’ve been lying low through deer season, but with sun in the forecast and such a beautiful start to the day, we decided to ditch our usual routine and head out for a walk.
We didn’t even get to the preserve before this caught our attention. Jack Frost had exposed the hidden snares of spiders. This red light is the final stop for flies!
I snapped my photo as the light turned green, giving Older Daughter a laugh. “That was fun for those truckers,” she said, “seeing a woman take out a foot-long camera to take a picture of a green light!”
At the preserve we enjoyed the frosty setting, though we didn’t see many birds. Chickadees were calling everywhere, but they stayed up high in the treetops.
Fresh beaver work! Whoever is responsible was snug inside the lodge, though.
When we got to the boardwalk, I took pictures of a sparrow in its ice palace.
Meanwhile, Older Daughter took pictures of me. I like this one with its waterfall of light — a cold sun baptism.
My daughters picked up various ice samples and then, when the chunks were large enough, exulted in the joy of smashing them.
Then they played in the creek for awhile on our way back out. My toes and fingers were cold, but the girls can play in water in any wind or weather. Older Daughter had a balsa boat she’d made, and Younger Daughter heaved all that was heavable to make splashes for the dog.A Cooper’s hawk flew strongly over our heads as we walked back to the car. I dislike the way Cooper’s hawks eat songbirds, but I admire their strength and speed in the air. I have to respect a creature willing to work so hard for its sustenance, and they are beautiful to look at.
It was a glorious morning.
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Killer Athlete
We have two Cooper’s hawks that pass through occasionally. The one pictured here is, I believe, immature. But the other is an adult, complete with the red flush on its breast, a bluish back, and red eyes.I’ve come to recognize them even in silhouette by the way they perch high up, near the trunks of trees, and also by the way they flick their tails — as though they’re forever dusting.
A few times I’ve walked out to scare them away. I know they need to eat, but I can’t sit by and watch them take our songbirds. I haven’t seen them get one yet this year, but I’ve seen the pursuit.
This morning, though, my songbird altruism backfired — enough to make me reconsider my interference. I saw the magnificent adult land in a tree, and I walked out. My dog ran ahead of me and startled a whole flock of mourning doves out of the brush below where the Cooper was perched. He took off like a shot after them. Last I saw, he had selected one and was bearing down in the distance. I never saw the outcome.
The hawk’s athleticism is so impressive to me! — his quick response, his acceleration and speed, his lightning-fast maneuvers in flight. Amazing…
I won’t be meddling again, though. The doves had been well hidden until I blundered into their life-and-death game of hide-and-seek.
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Raptor Jackpot
On our way to visit family for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, we counted 26 red-tailed hawks in the treetops along the highway. It had to be a record. There was also one dead one beside the road. 🙁
We began the day with a visit from this one to our back yard, raising the tally to 27. I am always impressed by the patience of hawks — though I realize they have no other choice but to wait and watch for their breakfast (with discreet breaks for personal grooming).
We passed a reservoir on our hour-long ride, and I noticed some dark shapes on a limb. A stop to investigate revealed that they were juvenile eagles, and as we watched, another came in for a landing.
There are actually five eagles in the tree: 4 brown juveniles, and a single mature adult half hidden in the center of the tree. It was an amazing sight!
The young retain their dull coloration for several years. It’s interesting how ragged they look, for such regal birds.
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Companionship
I thought hawks and pigeons had a warier relationship than this!
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Misty Morning
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Lab Mascot
This was an appropriate sight in the parking lot at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
I learned from a person at the lab that this hawk, which we’ve seen before around Sapsucker Woods, was rehabilitated and released nearby, and he’s just stayed around. People don’t rattle him. It made me wonder if the hawk we saw yesterday might have been a rehabilitated hawk as well. That would help to explain his lack of fear around people.
I notice that when hawks launch, they always go down before they go up. Food for thought.
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Amazing
The girls and I watched this hawk hunting for awhile at Brick Pond today. He saw us too. (From here on out I’m calling it “he,” because “it” seems not quite right…)
Older Daughter showed great patience. She wanted to see him take off, or pounce on something. Eventually her patience paid off; he crossed the water and we lost sight of him — till he flew into a tree on our side, about five feet from us.
He sat there through a battery change in my camera, and my daughters’ whispered exultation. Then he pounced on a mouse right in front of us, and took it to a tree next to our car. It was as if he wanted his activities documented.
He polished off the mouse in about 3 minutes. I thought of the line from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “There’s nothing better than fish that were alive a half hour ago, and came out of the pan half a minute ago.” But in this case, it’s “There’s nothing better than a mouse that was alive a minute ago, and is now in my crop.”
Then he wiped his beak and jumped handily to a post-meal perch.
It was unusual… I remember watching a documentary about Pale Male, and how close people would come to the Central Park hawks — and how foolish that was. But in any case we weren’t harmed; he came to us, rather than vice versa. And there were no visible injuries, and no problems with his hunting ability — that’s for sure.
We left him looking regal in the waning sunlight.
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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater…
…was a squirrel.
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Feeder visitors
Pine siskin We’ve had a number of these siskins frequenting our sunflower and nyjer feeders. They look like streaky goldfinches.
They’re willing and able to carve out some space among the goldfinches.
I glanced out and saw what looked like a goldfinch on steroids, and it turned out to be an evening grosbeak — three of them, actually, apparently passing through. We are used to rose-breasted grosbeaks in the summer here, but it was a treat to see these cousins.
Evening grosbeak 
Other transients include the white-throated sparrows that scratch around below the feeders, ground-feeding.
They’re seldom still, and our windows aren’t the cleanest. I love these plump sparrows, though.
We’ve had red-breasted nuthatches come through too — gorgeous little birds that I never saw before this year. And we have our usual crowd of cardinals, chickadees and titmice, house finches and goldfinches. Mourning doves and bluejays try to get their share too, making a big mess for the ground feeders to clean up.
Then there are the least welcome visitors.
Hmmmm…. 
Ready, set… 
GO! -
Autumn sights
We’re past the peak for fall color, and as the season mellows, other quieter beauties emerge.
November is coming, when Northeasterners hunker down for the long winter’s deprivation of color. I like to prepare myself with John Updike’s poem about November in A Child’s Calendar:
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The loss of her
Departed leaves.The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain
Loveliness –The beauty of the bone.
