HAWK EYES
The hawk soared through the skies, scanning the fields and clearings below for signs of movement, its wings bent in a motionless V. The world below sped by in a blurred patchwork of fields, forest and swamp. Narrow dirt roads crosshatched the countryside.
The hawk cut sharply to the left for a moment and followed a car along the road, a dusty plume trailing in its wake, then cut back to the right and out over the field.
It had been flying through the summer skies for the better part of an hour, eyes narrowing in on every twitching piece of grass, every trembling shrub.
It had killed a snake almost an hour before, its piercing cry the only forebear of death for the sun basking reptile. One minute it had been curled lazily on a bun baked rock, the next, its life was over, clasped in the sharp talons of the bird of prey.
Snakes were bony though, hard work. What the hawk wanted was something plump and juicy; maybe a nice rabbit, or a fish. It calculated its options, scanning the world below, then adjusted its trajectory out towards the nearby lake.
The hawk drifted gracefully into the upper limbs of a dead tamarack and alighted gently in the stunted upper boughs.
It surveyed the shoreline below with a quick flicking motion of its head. There were small fish darting about in the shallows below. A chipmunk dashed through the tall grasses. Those were fine for a moment, but fleeting in their lasting nourishment. The hawk was hungry for something bigger.
The hawk froze, scuttling in a little closer to the trunk of the tree. A flock of mergansers had just entered the bay and were skidding to a stop in the water about twenty feet away from the tree. The hawk’s eyes zeroed in, scanning the brazen dozen and waited until one of them drifted off from the group, its head underwater as it plucked at the plant life below.
The hawk leapt from the branch and tucked its wings in close, rocketing towards the straggler like a missile. It talons sunk deep into the ducks fleshy neck and it flapped its muscular wings, struggling with all its might to pull its meaty meal from the scattering flock of honkers.
They turned on him, a dozen angry birds, even more, pecking with their dull scoop-shaped beaks. Relenting under the sheer force of the ducks’ numbers, he released his prey and retreated to the treetop above.
Today was not his day.
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