Mr. Majestic

 Mr. Majestic – or maybe it's Ms...

Noel Laflin

8-24-20

I call him Mr. Majestic, even though he may be a she – it’s difficult to tell with hawks – unless, as a falconer once informed me when showing him a photo of a Cooper’s hawk and asking him whether it was male or female, to which he responded, “You never want to get that close to find out.”

And so the gender of our neighborhood red-tailed hawk remains a mystery – but his/her majesty lives on despite my curiosity.

Mr. Majestic took up residence in our neighborhood about a year ago. He claimed the highest pine on the hillside as his own, perched at the very top on most days. You can hear him call out from a quarter mile away, and clearly see his outline atop the pine from just as far away, as the red-tailed is the largest of the hawks out this way in East Orange.

He, or she, had quite the following of other red-tailed friends during mating season this past late winter and early spring. Like a song from a beloved musical, they flew lazy circles in the sky over our neighborhood all through those months. Then it made itself scarce for the next month or two, perhaps seeing to the raising of kids – but that is just speculation on my part. All I know is that Mr. Majestic is now back and scouring the neighborhood for tasty bunnies and such.

He startled me yesterday as I was watering the garden - coming in fast and silent from the east, crossing near eye level, and landed in a tall tree on the other side of my fence about seventy-five feet away.

The tree he/she chose is an Ailanthus altissima - or more commonly known as a tree of heaven. Some, like me, refer to the messy, invasive species as the tree from hell, as they are a nuisance, and hell to kill off. You may recognize the species as the stubborn tree that refused to die from Betty Smith’s 1943 classic, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

But as much as I detest the constant sprouting of tiny, tenacious trees of heaven that try to sprout and take over my tiny garden, and over the fence, and down both sides of the canal that runs from east to west behind our property, I was, for once, grateful that this particular one stood where it has stood for the last twenty years or so and gave Mr. Majestic a place to perch, preen, and generally look regal for the next five minutes, before he sprung from his heavenly perch and flew back the way from which he came. I am also grateful that I had a camera nearby.

I was thinking that I should entitle this brief piece, “A Tree Grows, Despite My Best Efforts To Kill It, In El Modena.”

Nah – I think I will stick with Mr. Majestic instead. Or, maybe Ms. Majestic.

But I really don’t want to get that close to determine which it is.