And we have breaking news! Yesterday, as I mowed the front lawn, Janneke came running from the back yard to tell me that some kind of hawk had bashed itself against our picture window. "Can't be a hawk," I said, and moved to the back yard.
I was right, turns out. It wasn't a hawk. It was a falcon. Here's what he looked like at first:
I sat down in the grass next to him, and took some pictures, of course, but also took care to shade his eyes, since he didn't seem like he could close them. He was breathing, and moving his beak somewhat, and slowly folding his wings - actually, the wings were probably just collapsing back into the folded position because of gravity. He was out just about as cold as a bird can be. After a couple of minutes, he started to come around more and more, to blink more regularly, and to raise his head and look around groggily. I knew from my days watching ER that the ability to move the head meant his neck wasn't broken, which was good. Here's a closeup:
T came and sat with me and sat on my lap, and we used our time as his human shade trees to talk about him - how his talons are for grasping birds, and his beak is sharp and hooked so he can tear the meat off them once he's killed them. She noticed his stripes, the gentle stripe along his eyebrow...Then it ocurred to me that while he was zonked, we could consult every possible angle in my bird book and determine what it was. I sent T in to ask Mami to send it out with her, while I kept guard against the sun and against the neighbor's cat.
T trooped back out with the book, and we determined that it was a merlin, or pigeon-hawk. Their range doesn't appear to include New England at all, but in the accompanying paragraph it said "Northern New England, rarely". So we were allowed.
After a bit more, we rolled him over onto his stomach - seemed like an easier position from which to stand up, which, given the way he was following my hand with his eyes, he was going to want to do soon. He didn't resist or panic - just accepted the whole business with admirable poise. T got to stroke his tail feathers, and I dared to venture a little farther north and feel the top of his head. Nice and hard, no blood - he seemed fine, just stunned. Probably five more minutes, and then he stood:
Utterly gorgeous. He was still following my hand when I moved it in front of him, but still seemed just shy of sufficiently present to realize that this was not a circumstance in which, evolutionarily, it would be advantageous for him to be. As it turned out in the end, Hobie hurried things along. He was snuffing and sniffing ever closer to the bird, and I tried to call him off, but realized for the thousandth time that he is almost completely deaf. My last shout as he approached the bird, coupled with my lunge to try to shove him back, snapped the bird his senses, and he leapt up and flew quite skillfully over our woodpile, across the fence, and around toward the trees at the back or our neighbor's yard, where he tried to land, but didn't quite make it and fluttered to the ground. And so our chapter in his adventure ended.
It occurs to me now that he was still in danger back there from cats, but fear not: around supper time, we saw him perched on the neighbor's fence, probably still nursing a headache and recovering his strength. Mark Brandriss, our friend from up the road, told us that in his 35 years or so of avid bird watching, he's seen one merlin. So we feel pretty lucky.
Though the lucky stuff waited until after noon to happen. I went squirrel hunting again Saturday morning, and spent almost four hours in the woods and saw absolutely nothing. It's public land near Williamstown, open to hunting, but I swear, that entire mountain (which I summitted) has not a single oak tree. At the top I did find a lot of berry bushes, and accompanying bear scat, but that was the end of my excitement. Pretty good exercise, though.
And of course there's this picture to share with you:
Why? I don't know - taunting you, I guess. Because we get to look at that every day. (Unfortunately, some times, like when she's in a panic for the tenth time because the scary part of "The Neverending Story" is coming, we also get to listen.)
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