Hawks have made it to the pages of Angelkeep Journals on previous occasions. Typically, when one appeared, it included an event that simply could not be left untold.
Years ago a hawk had a stare-down confrontation with a large neighboring cat. The cat sat back poised in a leap-and-spring mode ready for a catapulting (pardon the pun but it was intentional) in the direction of a perched hawk. The hawk, with talons splayed into the top of a tree stump four or five feet off the ground, warlike, hawkishly (pardon the again intentional pun) stared and prepared for the killing sweep toward the cat.
It was the old cat-and-mouse, with the mouse converted into a hawk, and both had fine dining instinctively instilled in each its cat or bird brain. Simultaneously, or so it appeared as it happened so fast, each attacked the other. Each deflected in less than success off the body of its opponent and both cowered away, one high, one under the pier, to lick wounds and try to determine the cause of the lunch failure.
Other hawks of the past successfully removed a generation of muskrat kits, very young, very tender age, flying them off for what surely was less than a vacation experience. Additional earlier-witnessed hawks simply posed near the bird feeders, eventually leaving due to all the small songbirds being warned of the hawk’s presence by the surround-sound shrill squawking (say that three times fast) of blue jays which encircled the hawk at a distance and performed the air raid warning system for all other birds.
Angelkeep learned a long time ago to listen for the blue jays’ alarm to catch a sighting of another hawk.
Angelkeep also learned a long time ago it was nearly impossible to identify the variety of hawk visiting Angelkeep. Internet intelligence suggested the easiest way to tell one variety from another was to have them side by side. Well, that never happens. Angelkeep tried Googling “well that never happens” and was referred to Bible verses, suggesting drinking from the well that never runs dry.
And 2022 only added to the hawk-identification calamity. Previously, all stories of hawks seem to involve either a Cooper’s hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk. Angelkeep avoided ever concluding an identification with an asterisk (“*”) meaning unverifiable. Angelkeep learned to separate these varieties that occasionally performed as Angelkeep’s wildlife enjoyment and entertainment.
Granted, there was a very fine line between those two hawks. Without a good photo of the tail it might have required a questioning asterisk. If each hawk would visit at the same time and stand side by side, the sharp-shinned could be identified because of its shorter stature. Color, markings, eyes, beak, and seemingly everything else came in a mirror image.
A hawk photo posted on a nature group of Facebook brought up the typical debate between self-proclaimed experts. The less than expert, yet resourceful sort, used their iPhone and took a picture of Angelkeep’s photo with the phone app trying to identify the type of bird. There’s more than one app for that, and they don’t always agree. Thus it was in 2022 when American kestrel hawk joined the befuddlement of hawk knowledge at Angelkeep.
Wikipedia, and other internet sites, implying knowledge of all wonders, tend to use photos with sharp color contrasts. These photos lifted off other internet users often are those where the photographer had mega-bucks cameras, with optional lenses and filters, unknown to common man, such as the case at Angelkeep with a Nikon, but a simple Nikon point-and-shoot variety. Also photographers have a computerized way of enhancing all kinds of photo aspects like contrast, color, light, and Photoshop can even put a cat’s head on a bird’s body. Thus internet’s look-alike photo identification falls into the same category as Facebook Tomfoolery.
Angelkeep hawks now come in three varieties. I’m almost sure-and-certain that Angelkeep had a visit by an American kestrel (“*” “*”). It seemed to have a more bluish tint to the head and wing plumage, more so than sharp-shinned (“*”) and/or Cooper’s (“*”).
Angelkeep could ask Facebook again but (*:”/#@!).
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
