Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters

Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk 84 Red-tailed Hawk It is a gray December day and snow blows sideways. A redtailed hawk perches high in the branches of a ponderosa, the hard-eyed raptor huddled close to the trunk, scanning the snow-covered fields. I approach across open ground, and the hawk eyes me warily, black pupils centered in the yellow egg yolks of its eyes. White streaks run over its forehead and its breast feathers are fluffed out with the cold.As if posing for a coin it turns its head side to side,sharing with me first one,and then the other, of its godly profiles. I lower my binoculars and remain where I am.The hawk feigns disinterest, drawing a single taloned foot up and tucking it into its chest.This is a lean time of year. Calories are hard to come by.The sharp hook of the hawk’s beak glows like a pale incandescence in the colorless landscape and if this bird dreams it dreams of mouse and mouse blood, sunning snakes, and the warmth of a summer thermal cupped under its wings. For reasons of its own the hawk allows my presence, motionless but for its swiveling head. Ultimately, however, it is enough, and the hawk launches itself into air,flying away on a level line, cutting the trees in half.As the hawk crosses in front of me it cranes its head over its shoulder and an unexpected thrill fills me, warming me like a heated stone at the foot of a bed. Mercy,god only knows,is not at all what we think.Hunger is the beginning of everything. Just ahead of me a tiny set of tracks disappear in the snow, to either side the brush marks of wings. ...