A Wild Hawk

Early in June, just past dawn, this young red-tailed hawk perched on the fence outside my writing room door for a good long while. To say I was dumbstruck hardly conveys the sense of wonder and disbelief I felt and still feel about my encounter with this wild bird, one I ordinarily only hear by his piercing cry and see swooping a hundred feet above..

Barely awake, I glanced out the window and saw him, entirely at ease. One leg drawn up like this does not signal an injury, but a calm and relaxed posture, as I was to learn later in the day.

Yet I wondered if something was wrong, for in all the decades I have lived here I have never been this close to a wild bird of this size. He seemed unafraid. And so, in all honesty, was I. I drew closer and closer to him by increments, first to look at him through a window, then through a screen door. Then slowly I stepped outside to stand a few feet away from him.

Then he did move, but also slowly. He seemed a bit scruffy, so I wasn’t sure if he was injured or just a juvenile.

He made himself big, and then he tried to fly.

He wasn’t very good at it, only going a few feet.

He paused again and gazed around. Flew a few more feet and landed on the fence again.

Then he fully flew off. I understood when I looked at this photo that hawks fly like this with legs down to capture their prey.

He landed on our deck, near the tall eucalyptus tree that was likely his nest location. One of my cats caught sight of him and streaked into the house. The other one was more curious. I wasn’t going to interfere with this meeting, but called my cat repeatedly. The hawk too communicated his message and my cat thought better of engaging and soon came in also.

Later in the afternoon I went to gather my two cats to take them to the vet for their annual vaccines and found them both fascinated with something in the bushes just the other side of the deck fence. I was eye to eye with the hawk again, imagining that he looked a bit panicked, still on the ground at 3:00 p.m. I scooped up both cats, easy to catch with that kind of distraction, and bundled them off to the vet, where I asked who to call about this hawk. Soon I was speaking with Margarita at the Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley.

Could I send her a photo? You bet, I had a whole series of them.

Just a youngster, as it turned out. She said he even had a crop full of food, was healthy but young and that his parents might be around to bring him food. She asked that I keep the cats in so they or the hawk would not be injured. Then just wait and see. “We don’t want to over-rescue,” she said.

The next morning he was nowhere to be found.

I have never had such a close encounter with wildlife here, but I wonder if possibly the ungodly noise of the water district’s flood wall construction just across the creek might have disrupted this young hawk’s behavior. Or not. There are many hawks around here, despite encroachment of human, feline and machine interference.

But now when I look up, I wonder if I am seeing my hawk, riding the wind from treetop to treetop.