Gratitude

Gratitude

Noel Laflin

6-13-18

We startled one another well enough, I reckon, when the young hawk, cloaked in twilight's last glimmer, leapt from the gutter and flew to the fence. We were no more than ten feet from each other when I surprised him, and him, me.

"Jesus!" I whispered.

A whoosh of flapping wings was his only reply.

The flight was not graceful as he carried a load in his razor sharp talons - it would prove to be his dinner.

The fence the raptor briefly rested upon borders a patch of green belt where I frequently sit beneath shady trees waiting for an up-until-recently elusive pin-tail whydah, and its mate, to fly down to a well-stocked feeder. They are easily recognized by both their song and and shiny red beaks.

But fast approaching nighttime had turned the idyllic spot into something darker, and suddenly less inviting.

The young Cooper's hawk eyed me with a steely gaze as I crept up closer to get a better look at both he and its prey.

There was something red resting on the fence.

"Oh no," I panicked; "He's grabbed that cocky whydah!"

I snapped a shaky photo on my cell phone. The flash got the hunter's attention. He rose awkwardly and sailed off, a dark silhouette flying low with it's load.

Returning home, I downloaded the blurry image from my phone and viewed it on a larger screen, zooming in on the red I had glimpsed just minutes before.

"That's no beak," I sighed with relief, grateful to Mother Nature that she had spared the bird of whom I'd recently become so fond.

But the bloodied rabbit in the blurry image probably would not have shared my gratitude.