A hawk's meal (flash post)

I have never seen so many hawks. Does that mean there are more to see this year? Or does it mean something about my looking?

I am looking now, out my office window to the northwest at a large grey bird sitting vertically on a bent branch of a leaf-bare tulip poplar tree. I'd estimate the hawk is 60 feet up, and the tree has another 60 to go.  

No sign yet if this is a red-tail. The belly is white, wings and head are grey. I expect, when it finally takes flight, I'll see the familiar red-beige tinge on the pale spread of wings. And in the right light, the russet tail.

The bird is digesting. Earlier, a cry pierced my closed window -- loud enough to rouse me from typing, but it was the gobble-chirp I associate with hawks going about their routines, not a screech. The hawk hunched over the bent branch. Two small birds hovered, taking aim from opposite branches, colliding into the hawk's back, the hawk's wing. Looking at that distance like flies, they were probably bluejays. I saw a jay hectoring a hawk in my backyard recently. I've seen crows, singly and in pairs, hectoring hawks in flight. For all I can tell, the hawk doesn't mind, but I imagine it's annoying to have little bullies clipping past, snapping at your feathers. Naturally, the smaller birds are acting to protect their habitat and their young.

Eventually, the two pestering birds left the hawk to his business, bending like a walking beam, yanking up on fibrous strands, swallowing. I'm guessing the meal was something with tendons and fur, not a bluejay nestling or another jay. A long digestive sit ensued, with occasional beak to branch to tidy up, savor the last morsels. And a jay returned, playing nah-nah-nah-boo-boo. The hawk reacted, made a false snap in the jay's direction, then flew off to a branch higher up in the canopy, where it sat until taking off. I saw grey wings, an apricot-tinged belly, a dark tail.

That wasn't one of the pale-winged red-tails nesting at the edge of our back yard. But that's the direction this hawk flew when it left its post. I'm guessing a cooper's hawk. Although the internet tells me the red-tailed hawk is the larger of the two, and from my vantage today, I was looking at a large hawk, one that made the bluejay tiny.