IN JANUARY, I raised the blinds in the bedroom and right out the back window was an adult Cooper’s hawk, perching upright. It looked huge.
In May I saw a bald eagle hunkered down in a sod field up the road from where I grew up.
In September I interviewed the woman who filmed a red-tailed hawk diving into a garbage can by Morningside Park to kill and retrieve a rat.
In November I tried and failed to take a picture of a red-tailed hawk in the air.
I didn’t publish anything about it but in two different times in December, in Morningside Park, I saw a red-tailed hawk fly up low and settle onto a prominent perch—once on top of a flagpole, once in a tree right over my head—only to be surrounded and strafed by blue jays until it gave up and flapped away. The second time, with the hawk in the tree, I was looking nearly straight up from below, so when the first jay flew in, I saw the gray and white underfeathers instead of the blue top feathers, and for a moment I got the scale all wrong and thought it was a titmouse and the titmouse might potentially be in trouble. The jays were absolutely not in any trouble. The hawk barely even tried to hold its spot before fleeing.
HELP US AND RING IN THE NEW YEAR! – Brick House’s 2023 Bodega Calendars are here, and they are gorgeous! Contribute the admittedly whopping sum of $75 (we really need money) to the Brick House, money that directly funds our operations and pays our writers, editors and artists, and receive your amazing Calendar as a token of our gratitude. This year’s calendar art is by Popula creative director Joe MacLeod!! Learn what day it is in a riotously flowering state of happiness. It has Birthstones of the Month and stuff on there!!!
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