It’s warmer today, mercury already at eighty by midday, and yet autumn still whispers insistently on the wind. There’s no question that fall is here to stay, even if it does welcome the occasional return of some of the spirits of summer, here only for a few hours’ visit in the bright light of day.
Meanwhile, the fall spirits are returning for the duration, making their presence known: as of Friday, the nuthatch is back; the siskins have been here for months, unusually; I expect to see the towhee any day; and of course, the young raptors are learning the ways of their homelands now.
Those last have given us special joy in recent months: Our local red-tail hawk in residence, the one I affectionately call “my girl” because she knows us by sight and by the sound of our voices, and comes to greet us whenever she returns, has grandchildren now. She has lived here for at least a decade and likely more, but apparently first became a mother only two or three years ago. We watched her raise her young son here, watched him grow [just] to adulthood and find a girl of his own, watched them take over the family nest in the big cottonwood across the highway and begin the work of trying to raise a family of their own . . . only to learn that the female of this young pair had been poisoned, and didn’t make it. He spent a good deal of time alone thereafter; on more than one occasion, a larger red-tail tried to move in on this territory, only to have my girl come swooping out of the skies as though from nowhere, to chase them off.
Until one day, a new female appeared. She was a bit older, significantly larger, but seemingly willing to entertain our young male as a partner. They courted for a few weeks, and Mom, who visited more than once, clearly gave her blessing. In the earliest part of the spring, they set up housekeeping in the same nest, and we now have two juvenile red-tails who are learning how to engage with this land that is their own.
And sometimes, it’s Grandma who returns to teach them.
It’s been a gift, seeing this inter-generational interaction in a way that we did not even know existed in their world. It’s fall as a time for growth — for them, and for so many others; for us, too, although humans tend not to see it that way, so many of them already bemoaning the prospect of winter. For us, though, it’s a welcome season for so very many reasons, including their presence now, and the latter makes us all the more grateful to have done our best to keep this a safe space for their grandmother all those years ago.
The subject of this week’s Monday Photo Meditation, manifest in the image above, embodies these truths, although I did not see it that way at the time. It’s a photo that dates back seventeen years almost exactly, if memory serves: to the first few days, perhaps the first, of October in 2017. It’s a shot that Wings captured with his very first digital camera, a small first-generation edition of its kind, on a day trip we took down to the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, with our dog, hunter, along for the ride. It was a journey born of loss, and mourning; on the last day of September, only a day or so before, we had been forced to bid farewell to our other dog, BearGirl, and our hearts will still in pieces and our spirits raw and abraded.
The trip down was beautiful, even if our minds were not fully on it or our surroundings. It was a mild day, unusual cloud cover hanging low, turning the skies a fog-like gray limned in pale yellow. It was the perfect temperature for walking around a wildlife refuge, and we encountered virtually no one else; indeed, there were precious few wild birds in the residence that day, the summer crowd apparently having already departed and the winter migrants not yet in evidence. We did see a few water and shore birds, as well as the ubiquitous ravens and crows, and a single small hawk perched up high, a bird on a wire watching our arrival.
Wings did not capture that photo then.
Instead, we found a place to park, not at all difficult given the utter absence of anyone else, and we began to walk. In truth, as much as we enjoy such visits to such places, on that day, it was more about escaping the great grief that had hollowed all three of us out so completely. I do remember it being a lovely day as far as temperature goes, and the clouds were in fact welcome, at least to me.
But as we left to begin our homeward journey, they lifted suddenly, and by the time we reached the turnoff to the highway back toward town, they were once again a hard, bright blue.
And the hawk was still there.
Of course, more likely, he had simply returned, rather than having been stationary the whole time we were there. He was high up on the web of wires that suddenly gleamed silver in the sunlight, looking thoroughly at home but also very small, from our distance below, we thought it was a Cooper’s hawk. I never had reason to question that until last week, when I came across the old photo files for the first time in years.
Seeing it now, I can tell, less from the coverts and wing feathers than from the bars and tip of its tail: This was a young red-tail hawk, not yet fully mature. Indeed, much like the two that live here now with us, this one was probably just learning the boundaries of its world, and how best to engage with them. Against the brilliant stark blue of the autumn sky, it made even the wires and line equipment look beautiful, and it takes a lot to accomplish that.
Bear Girl’s anniversary is coming up again on the last day of this month: seventeen years since this first shared loss. Before then, we have another loss to observes — tomorrow, as it happens, which marks the second year since the loss of my beloved paint horse, Miskwaki. I say “my,” but all of the animals have always been “ours,” and Wings and I have both grieved them all terribly, but of the horses, the two boys were “mine” just as the girls were “his.” Miskwaki’s coat was not far different from that of the red-tails now, too, deep rusty reds with hints of brown and plenty of white.
Seeing this image again revives the sense of loss, but it also reminds me that this is a season, too, for life, fall as a time for growth. The young hawks are proof of that.
~ Aji
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