The Artistic Cooper's Hawk...

…for me, fuzzy photos = artistic photos, so this batch is as artsy as they come…but I love them! I took these through the screen of the kitchen window in glowing late afternoon light. I had to climb up on the counter, sitting half in the sink to capture them because he was almost out of view. The strange angle of the lens against the screen put a soft halo around the bird…and the low-angled sunlight lit the grasses in the background with warm golden tones.

This is a handsome bird. When I look at his eyes and beak I see beauty, but the little birds in my yard don't see that. Instinctually, they see danger. So starts the love/hate relationship with hawks and other birds of prey.

I'm a fluffy bird. I like to fluff. Fluffing is my favorite...

I like how the camera captured his eye in this photo...just a sliver.

I am a formidable bird. Look into my eyes and tell me I don't make you tremble...

I have no idea what he's looking at here. He obviously dropped in to pick up some some fast food at our feeders, but all of our little McTitmice, McJuncos and McChickadees were long gone.

I spent about an hour and a half last night looking through my books of nature poetry trying to find a poem about a hawk. Seems poets shy away from the power of the bird or the fact that he kills for a living. I found a few, but nothing struck me with the beauty I see in this bird. Not even Emily Dickinson or Thoreau came through for me. Walt Whitman has a nice poem about a hawk, but the line...

“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.”

…didn’t capture what I felt when I saw him. I think Emerson's essay on nature and beauty probably comes a little closer:

A NOBLER WANT OF man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.

The ancient Greeks called the world Cosmos, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping.

(from "Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson.")

...there is no denying the beauty in his form and eyes, but even though I'm drawn to him, I have to acknowledge his power and his ability to kill the little birds I feed.

....I think I'll forget about that part and remember his job is to pull the sick and slow birds out of the population. Mother Nature has a plan, so I'll admire the fierce glare in his eyes and sleek tilt of his brow...and shoo him away every now and then as I try to get closer with my camera (because I don't think Mother Nature envisioned her Cooper's getting fat at the local fast-food joint!). Good thing our Blue Jays sound the warning and the healthy birds get out fast.

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