“It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk.
On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”
(Charles Baudelaire)
It’s been a long week. The pace at work has quickened again and I found my Self driving into the office several times. Not that driving into the office is unusual, but this is one week I’d have preferred to skip it. The Woodward Dream Cruise is today, and what started out as a little whim – to dedicate one day to driving the infamous strip in Detroit’s most beloved and lovingly maintained or restored products – has now become Big Business and traffic on my normal route has now become a nightmare of congestion that spreads insidiously across the county like some mechanical virus for a whole week.
And if there’s one thing I dislike, it’s crowded roads.
Unable to escape the grip of firedrills before the start of rush hour, and with having to make a stop on the way home yesterday it felt like forever before I finally coasted up the driveway. Spent but grateful to be back on <em>terra familiaris</em>. The brightly-colored impatiens framing the deeply-shaded little dooryard, glowing against the wooden fence and dark-red brick of the houses, were a sight for eyes weary of sun glaring off asphalt and concrete. As I got out of the car and made my way to the side door of the house, a hand suddenly appeared over the high top of the backyard gate, gesturing me to come near. Then I heard Bob’s loud and excited whisper.
The young Cooper’s hawk was here!
It made its presence known to us two weeks ago and is apparently hanging around. Quite the fearless little one, Bob had been watching it for perhaps ten minutes or so. And had brought out my camera.
I, of course, dropped everything and beat stealthy feet to the backyard. The hawk had moved to the utility lines behind the house next door and was resting while keeping an eye out for the return of the flocks of small sparrows who frequent our bird feeder and that of our neighbor two doors down.
<p style=”text-align: center;”><img src=”http://sciurusniger.smugmug.com/photos/352588645_kJHQq-L.jpg” alt=”Young Cooper’s hawk eyeballing potential prey.” /></p>
The late afternoon light was fantastic – clear and bright and low. Matilda sounded like a gentrified machine gun as she rattled off a hundred shots at her 7-frames-per-second speed, capturing every nuance of the hawk’s watchfulness.
Suddenly, the hawk decided to move. Really almost too fast for my big lens at this distance even if I’d been prepared for it, in the space of a heartbeat I was both resigned to missing the shot and enthralled at the sheer majesty that is a raptor in motion. I also thought that was the end of it. But the small hawk had other ideas and merely moved perhaps 30 feet into the backyard proper and stopped to perch on the utility lines that connect my neighbor’s house to the pole.
<p style=”text-align: center;”><img src=”http://sciurusniger.smugmug.com/photos/352588693_h2ebU-500×500.jpg” alt=”Precarious perch” width=”500″ height=”400″ /></p>
A precarious perch at best for anything larger than a pigeon, this didn’t last long, and with a great flap of its long wings, the young hawk again lifted and, to our surprise, simply moved up into the deep shadows and secure footing of the maple tree in the middle of the backyard.
It was entirely nonplussed as we moved in parallel in our yard to reposition Matilda near the edge of the low fence and I continued shooting. Strong gusts of the day’s light winds created a flurry of movement of leaves and shifting light that, combined with the surprisingly loud and incessant wail of sirens and the sounds of low-flying helicopters spilling over from the vast, milling crowds on nearby Woodward Avenue, put the hawk on high alert.
<p style=”text-align: center;”><img src=”http://sciurusniger.smugmug.com/photos/352588907_7HZ7p-500×500.jpg” alt=”On alert” /></p>
And yet, being young and perhaps more inherently savvy than most like to give credit, the hawk would soon realize no threat was imminent and settle down to wait some more. And I continued to shoot.
There is much to be learned from simple, quiet observation. While I do not rehabilitate raptors, I’ve had the opportunity to see them “up close and personal” and know that their large size is rather a deception. To be sure, they are incredibly powerful creatures, yet that immense power is contained in a body far smaller than their feathers would suggest. And as the wind blew in a particular heavy gust just as the young hawk drew up a talon in rest, its fragility became quite clear.
<p style=”text-align: center;”><img src=”http://sciurusniger.smugmug.com/photos/352588845_7Zihr-500×500.jpg” alt=”A glimpse of compact, hidden power.” width=”500″ height=”400″ /></p>
More than an hour passed before it finally headed off. A magical hour that swept my weary mind free of the cobwebs of Man’s frenetic posturings and put the world back in proper perspective.
<p style=”text-align: center;”><img src=”http://sciurusniger.smugmug.com/photos/352588920_8nEsC-500×500.jpg” alt=”Juvenile Cooper’s hawk” width=”500″ height=”400″ /></p>
It’s been said by many of the work-weary that it’s always happy hour somewhere. This was certainly one happy hour that will be remembered for a long, long time.
