The down side to the hawk’s presence is that their droppings are huge, pure white, and not easy to wash off, even with a power-nozzle hose. That’s small price to pay for the privilege of having them as neighbors.

Once the hawk’s chick can hunt by himself, the close-up visits will probably stop, as they did last year. There is a pasture nearby that offers open skies and probably a veritable feast of rodents running around. By late autumn, the hawks will have gone on to greener places, and we fans (which means us and most of our neighbors) will have to hold our collective breaths until spring and the hawks’ return. It worked this year, but we’ll see what 2012 brings.

I used to love watching hawks circle, riding the thermals high above the California hillside where I lived when I was a kid. The grownups used words like “majestic” and “soaring” to describe their flight, but I, earthbound and filled with envy, never gave it a name. I just tried to imagine how it would feel to be a hawk … rather, it seemed to me, akin to the feeling of diving into the lake, and gliding a long way before I had to give a kick and come up for air...only a whole lot better, because if you were a hawk, you could breathe and glide at the same time you were looking at the view.

The dictionary has several definitions for “hawk,” used both as a noun and as a verb, but none of them even hints at the fascination of a close encounter with the bird itself. They seem profoundly independent and self-sufficient despite having to adapt to an increasingly urbanized world.

It’s probably trite to refer to them as magnificent creatures, but that’s the only phrase that seems to come near fitting. I watch them as they fly, swift and silent through the thick woods, and wonder how something so large can glide its flawless path among the branches without even stirring the leaves.

In our family, we have coined a phrase for the power these birds exert over us. We have, in a word, been hawked. And we count that as our great good fortune.

©2011 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

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