Animal Stories #1: Birds Know

It turns out, raptors, hawks in particular, really like me. I’m not sure why.

I first noticed it when a buddy and I were biking across Montana. We were in the middle of a large yellow valley, the grasses dry with late summer. It was perfectly still and the sun was setting behind the western range, coloring the mountains. I noticed a bird flying slowly above me on my left when he pulled up abruptly and dropped something before me. I watched the thing fall and twirl in the air. It fell for seconds. And then PING! It was impaled on a barbed wire fence just beside the road, exactly in front of me. The noise was incredible. It was like nothing I have ever heard before or since. I looked at the thing. It was a mouse.

I searched the sky for the bird again but it had flown away, and left me with this small offering. I felt like I had to do something with it, so I gingerly pried it off the wire with a rock, and laid it on the side of the road on a small bed of grasses.

In subsequent research, I discovered that the bird was likely a Shrike, probably a Loggerhead though possibly a Northern. The shrike is an interesting bird. About the size of a Robbin, it’s a hawk wanna-be. It eats small critters, but lacks the powerful claws and beak of a large bird of prey. So it uses natural and man-made points to impale its prey (cactus spikes, pigeon guards, barbed wire) by dropping it from a distance. Then it flies down for a meal in a leisurely manner.

And so began my life with raptors. I noticed that hawks appear at important times, and make themselves known. Today, for instance, after I had purchased Meg a little Valentine’s day present and picked up our taxes, I was driving home on a minor freeway, when a white bellied hawk swooped down just above my pickup and rode the wind just in front of me. I watched the feathers on the tips of its wings curl upward. It scanned the road in front of me. If I had been standing on the hood of my truck I could have grazed its belly feathers. Who knows what catastrophe was narrowly averted by this keen hawk’s eye. I was happy to ride his wing. I was happy to get home safely, so I gave Megan her Valentine’s present early.

Often, Meg reports, she sees a hawk couple sitting on a light pole along highway 100 in the morning on her way to work. I’m not going to say that those hawks are not there to protect her on her way. It’s not for me to say that they are just sunning themselves above a busy freeway, looking for an easy pigeon. I’m not here to judge the knowledge of birds. After all, we’ve got an egg in the nest ourselves. We need all the help we can get. Birds know.

Each time I see a hawk, I thank my lucky stars. Thank goodness, I think. That must have been just in time!