The Well-Documented Hawk

I've photographed this sharp-shin at every opportunity. I never tire of trying to capture his beauty and urgent energy.

I've shot him in every light regime, always through windows, for he's wild and spooky.


It's hard to catch him eating. He takes his prey deep into the woods as soon as he has it subdued. A larger hawk would eat in the open, but he's closer to a jay in size than a crow, and he knows he could easily be killed by another raptor as he's concentrating on his meal.

All winter, I found his work.


I never frightened him; I let him eat, and then I'd go to see what he'd left


and who he'd had.

He liked the red ones best.

As poignant as these remnants of beauty were to me, I worried for him when he'd show up, eyes ablaze, so hungry that he flubbed every pass


for surprise is his only friend, and he's unlikely to snatch a bird by hovering over the feeders.

But still he tried, as if he could produce a meal from thin air. And sometimes it paid off, for a finch or woodpecker might be cowering on the side of the feeder. Like the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park, he seems not to be able to perceive his prey until it makes the mistake of moving.

Last spring, an orange-eyed streaky male sharpshin (still in immature plumage) cried out and dove on me as I neared the whitewashed zone of his nest. I like to think it was him, aged two, already paired and raising young. It was the first time sharpshins had nested on our land; I'd watched a nest just over the border about eight years ago, but finally they were on the sanctuary! I hope they are nesting with us again, and mean to find out. Even as populations of its bigger cousin, the Cooper’s, explode in cities and suburbs, the sharp-shinned declines.

Perhaps the woods where I hope they’re nesting will be silent, and I’ll have to wait until next winter to see my ruby-eyed friend again.

I will certainly know him. I have watched him grow in beauty and skill, taken so many photographs of his progress that even I am amazed at the gallery. I don’t begrudge him his living. He is a vital working part of this wildly skewed ecosystem, taking his pay in cardinals.

And leaving us all with an eye to the sky.

Traces of a Sharp-Shin

He is the James Bond of hawks, beating the bushes for his breakfast, almost always getting his man.

He hunts our feeders. When he is hungry he perches right on them, peering around for any bird who might be frozen to their sides or under their tops.

He is not what most people would consider a welcome feeder bird, but he always makes me smile. I have spread this feast for him, and he gladly avails himself.

He is the king of the birds in our yard, a cruel despot in their eyes.

The traces of his presence are everywhere—in the dark flank of a cardinal, torn

In the odd posture of a nuthatch, injured

who I no longer see around

And there’s nothing I can do about it but stop feeding

But to do that would be to lose the flocks I love so well

and send him hungry into the cold woods.

Spring is here and I miss him. I haven't seen him for weeks. Bill saw him April 25, circling over the east half of our land. Perhaps he is mated to the beautiful female sharpshin I saw carry a small package into the valley over which he circled. I hope he stayed.

I hear sharpshins calling from where she disappeared, on my morel-hunting slope below the big pines. Perhaps I’ll see him again when we’re moving slowly through the leaves, searching for pale honeycombed heads. The first ones came up April 21. We're hoping the gentle rains and soft ground will bring many more.

Sharp-shinned Hawk on the Feeder!

Oh, look. Who's that?

Oh, that's why there haven't been any birds around for the last hour. The sharp-shin is back!

The Indigo Hill sharp-shin as he appeared in November, 2007, the year of his hatch. He's in the spangled brown plumage of a juvenile. Now his back is blue as slate, with ruby eyes. My, how he’s grown, fueled by cardinals from our feeder.

All winter long and well into spring, we have played host to a sharp-shinned hawk. I’m almost certain, from his demeanor and habits, that he is the same little gentleman who was with us last year as a streaky, orange-eyed immature bird, and in 2007 as a rank juvenile (above). By that reckoning, and if it is indeed the same bird, he may be three years old now. He is smart, sleek and persistent, and he is an excellent hunter. Better than he was in 2007, and better than last year, to be sure.

Mostly, he presents himself as a blue bullet streaking about waist-high through the yard.

By the time the cardinal (almost invariably a male) is aware he’s being hunted he’s already being readied for processing into bite-sized bits. That’s a sharpie for you.

I love our sharpie. I choose to love him because I have attracted a small truckload of cardinals with my sunflower seed offerings; because I understand that a truckload (I’m talking 50-70) of cardinals in my yard is an unnatural concentration; and I accept the inevitability that somebody is going to take advantage of that. It is a perturbation in the natural scheme just begging for correction.

I also love him because he is beautiful.

He rockets through and alights in a tree like a piece of milkweed down, as if his talons snagged him suddenly there.

He looks about fiercely then settles into his bolt-upright comfort position, to stay for awhile and look for the unwary.

He extends a foot, knocks it on the branch a couple of times, and tucks it up into his downy belly feathers.

Doing so, he conjures Louis Fuertes and Lars Jonsson and the many sketches and paintings I’ve made of sharpies at rest, all tucked up and benign for a few moments.

He sees every small movement, in detail I can only imagine.

When he is hungry, he doesn’t sit so quietly.

He rages and frets, cartwheels, always on the attack, feathers sleeked to his hard little body.

This is when I am glad I’m not a junco.

Thanks to a persistent Pakistani spammer, I've had to disable comments on this post for the morning. Let's hope Mr. showpanmohsin, who lists his only hobby as Playing Video Games, will get discouraged and go stuff beans up his nose. And then let's hope they sprout.