Hawk Ridge raptor migration timing
Photo by J. Harrington
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Candidly, we haven't been paying much attention to the wind directions near Duluth but, if you're headed in that direction, you might want to check the wind and weather forecast to see if you can pick a better day to visit Hawk Ridge.
Hawk Ridge raptor migration pattern
Photo by J. Harrington
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This Saturday there'll be an Indigenous Foods Expo in Duluth, so, if you're looking for an excuse to head in that direction, now you have one. As if anyone needed excuses to head up North and see Lake Superior at this time of year!
(We spent a couple of hours in the dentist chair today so our posting is short and sweet. We need a nap or something.)
The Hawk's Cry in Autumn
Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high abovethe dove-gray, crimson, umber, brownConnecticut Valley. Far beneath,chickens daintily pause and moveunseen in the yard of the tumbledownfarmstead, chipmunks blend with the heath.Now adrift on the airflow, unfurled, alone,all that he glimpses—the hills’ lofty, raggedridges, the silver stream that threadsquivering like a living boneof steel, badly notched with rapids,the townships like strings of beadsstrewn across New England. Having slid down to nilthermometers—those household gods in niches—freeze, inhibiting thus the fireof leaves and churches’ spires. Still,no churches for him. In the windy reaches,undreamt of by the most righteous choir,he soars in a cobalt-blue ocean, his beak clamped shut,his talons clutched tight into his belly—claws balled up like a sunken fist—sensing in each wisp of down the thrustfrom below, glinting back the berryof his eyeball, heading south-southeastto the Rio Grande, the Delta, the beech groves and farther still:to a nest hidden in the mighty groundswellof grass whose edges no fingers trust,sunk amid forest’s odors, filledwith splinters of red-speckled eggshell,with a brother or a sister’s ghost.The heart overgrown with flesh, down, feather, wing,pulsing at feverish rate, nonstopping,propelled by internal heat and sense,the bird goes slashing and scissoringthe autumnal blue, yet by the same swift token,enlarging it at the expenseof its brownish speck, barely registering on the eye,a dot, sliding far above the loftypine tree; at the expense of the empty lookof that child, arching up at the sky,that couple that left the car and liftedtheir heads, that woman on the stoop.But the uprush of air is still lifting himhigher and higher. His belly feathersfeel the nibbling cold. Casting a downward gaze,he sees the horizon growing dim,he sees, as it were, the featuresof the first thirteen colonies whosechimneys all puff out smoke. Yet it’s their total within his sightthat tells the bird of his elevation,of what altitude he’s reached this trip.What am I doing at such a height?He senses a mixture of trepidationand pride. Heeling over a tipof wing, he plummets down. But the resilient airbounces him back, winging up to glory,to the colorless icy plane.His yellow pupil darts a sudden glareof rage, that is, a mix of furyand terror. So once againhe turns and plunges down. But as walls returnrubber balls, as sins send a sinner to faith, or near,he’s driven upward this time as well!He! whose innards are still so warm!Still higher! Into some blasted ionosphere!That astronomically objective hellof birds that lacks oxygen, and where the milling starsplay millet served from a plate or a crescent.What, for the bipeds, has always meantheight, for the feathered is the reverse.Not with his puny brain but with shriveled air sacshe guesses the truth of it: it’s the end.And at this point he screams. From the hooklike beakthere tears free of him and flies ad luminemthe sound Erinyes make to rendsouls: a mechanical, intolerable shriek,the shriek of steel that devours aluminum;“mechanical,” for it’s meantfor nobody, for no living ears:not man’s, not yelping foxes’,not squirrels’ hurrying to the groundfrom branches; not for tiny field mice whose tearscan’t be avenged this way, which forcesthem into their burrows. And only houndslift up their muzzles. A piercing, high-pitched squeal,more nightmarish than the D-sharp grindingof the diamond cutting glass,slashes the whole sky across. And the world seems to reelfor an instant, shuddering from this rending.For the warmth burns space in the highest asbadly as some iron fence down herebrands incautious gloveless fingers.We, standing where we are, exclaim“There!” and see far above the tearthat is a hawk, and hear the sound that lingersin wavelets, a spider skeinswelling notes in ripples across the blue vault of spacewhose lack of echo spells, especially in October,an apotheosis of pure sound.And caught in this heavenly patterned lace,starlike, spangled with hoarfrost powder,silver-clad, crystal-bound,the bird sails to the zenith, to the dark-blue highof azure. Through binoculars we foretokenhim, a glittering dot, a pearl.We hear something ring out in the sky,like some family crockery being broken,slowly falling aswirl,yet its shards, as they reach our palms, don’t hurtbut melt when handled. And in a twinklingonce more one makes out curls, eyelets, strings,rainbowlike, multicolored, blurredcommas, ellipses, spirals, linkingheads of barley, concentric rings—the bright doodling pattern the feather once possessed,a map, now a mere heap of flyingpale flakes that make a green slope appearwhite. And the children, laughing and brightly dressed,swarm out of doors to catch them, cryingwith a loud shout in English, “Winter's here!”
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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