I'll never forget the day I first saw a Red-tailed Hawk. In Haiti they call them Malfini, though a bit of Googling suggests that the Malfini is used in other places for the Broad-winged Hawk. We were out hiking in February of 2020, and we met a man who offered to show us a nest. I thought he meant a Palmchat nest, because I had been asking him questions about one of those, but when after a little bit of a walk he pointed upwards, an enormous head appeared in my binoculars' viewfinder. For a moment I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, since the head was so very much larger than what I had been expecting to see. And then a few minutes later, the bird I had seen and its mate whooshed down at us because we had come too close. Our guide introduced us to his employer, who lived in a house right nearby. We were invited in for mint tea, and our host teared up when he told us that the Red-tailed Hawk nesting within sight of his home was the best thing that had happened to him that year. The whole experience felt magical to my husband and me. It was one of the best things that happened to us that year.
Protective parents
Dive-bomb human intruders
Screeching warningly
©Ruth Bowen Hersey
No comments:
Post a Comment