Hill Country Afternoon I’m watching a Red Tail Hawk float quietly on the thermals above our hill when a loud, drawn-out, vaguely familiar “screeeeeeeeee” echoes around the valley and draws my eyes away to another large bird high above and behind the Red Tail. It’s coming fast. And I think I recognize the long, tapering call--but Ive never heard it here. My heart bumps a little thump as my sound-memories, a little bit of knowledge and a couple of rumors sort themselves into useful bundles while I grab my binoculars to get a closer look. If it looks like an eagle, and sounds like an eagle…. Alas—though not a surprise—it’s “just” a Swainson’s Hawk. The interloper’s majestic call sends the Red Tail away, not exactly fleeing its usual territory, but drifting discreetly over another hill to seek its dinner elsewhere. After it captures the prime hunting ground with not even a fluffing of its feathers, I assume the Swainson’s will descend and turn its attention to the earth and its furry morsels. Instead, it suddenly tucks its wings and swoops quickly off to the east in a long sweeping parabola, its echoing “screeeeeeee screeeeeeee” piercing the air again. And that’s when I remember it shouldn’t be passing over our hills this late in the season, but since it is, it should be traveling with some migratory friends. I lower my binoculars and spot them almost immediately--a dozen Swainson’s kettling slowly toward me from over the eastern hill. The point-bird joins the silent cast and I watch them with my long eyes as they swirl and twirl and dance toward me closer and closer, a slow, gentle whirlwind of wings and feathers and talons and beaks. Over the autumns of our Hill Country life, we’ve watched casts of hundreds of Swainson’s kettling south. They’ve never slowed down or sped up or done anything but dance together on their languid, beautiful journey. But today, one by one and two by two, the kettle dissolves into individual predators that spread out over the hills around me--several passing directly above my head--searching and hunting, but always moving, always drifting, drifting away to the warmer winter that draws them annually, naturally, inexorably south. And after they pass, the Red Tail Hawk returns to float quietly on the thermals above our hill.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 13:55:12 +0000
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