Hawks

Sky Dance.

I used to live in rural Wisconsin, up past the Dells, in the Tomah/Warrens/Millston area. We had about 20 acres, most of it wooded hills. Some of it was plowable, and there was a small pond just over the hill.

One day in mid-May my parents came up to visit and I was showing my Dad around the place. We were just coming up to the pond when something whooshed by. I caught a glimpse of it. A Red-Tailed hawk had just buzzed us, at about shoulder height. My Dad never noticed. He was marveling at the spring growth and the pond. It was beautiful sunny day.

After they went home, I went out to the pond again, and again I got buzzed. I know hawks don't normally do that sort of thing. I had my suspicions. Sure enough, after about an hour of hunting, I finally spotted a big nest made of twigs in one corner of the field where several Poplar saplings had grown straight and tall. She had been guarding the family. After that I stayed away as much as I could. Things were busy that spring, and I didn't have much chance to get out there anyway. I did see her enough times to notice that there was a notch in her left wing. Could have been made by a hunter taking pot shots, or maybe prey that didn't go down as easily as it was supposed to. But it was very noticeable when she was circling.

Then, one day that summer, Wendy and I were out on the patio and we heard a hawk cry. Then we heard another one. We went out from under the patio roof to look, and there was the whole family. I could recognize the mother from her notched wing, and after we'd picked her out we could see that the rest of them were smaller. I can't remember how many. Four, maybe five. Maybe six, but I doubt it. They were hard to count, circling around the cornfield and the tiny little valley where they'd been born, all at different heights, calling to each other. At least, I think they were calling to each other. Whoever they were talking to, they weren't being shy. The sky was full of hawk screams.

They did that for about half an hour longer, then the circles began to get bigger and bigger. The screams got fewer, and they slowly broke up. Because it happened so slowly, and because they were circling, I don't know which directions they went to. There were just fewer and fewer of them in sight, and then, finally, the sky was empty.

Notchwing came back the next year, but she nested somewhere else. I never found her nest again, and I never saw another hawk family leave the nest and do a sky dance. But I'd see her and her notched left wing, circling. In fact she came back again the next year, and the year after that. But not the next. We divorced and sold the house that year, and I moved into town. To this day, every time I see a Red-Tail in the sky, I glance at both wings.

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