Journal of a Sabbatical

April 1, 2000

hawk migration in progress

Plum Island Hawk Watch

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake, The Flight of the Condor by Michael Andrews

Four crows are mobbing a red-tailed hawk right outside my window. The crows make quite a racket cawing away. The hawk is silent. They cross the parking lot fairly low, and disappear over the roof next door. I don't hear the crows anymore, so either the whole drama has moved out of ear shot or they've driven the hawk away and gone back to their regular afternoon activities. The starlings, house sparrows, and robins are singing in the trees across the parking lot. They haven't missed a beat while this drama was going on overhead.

Yesterday when I was returning from Stop & Shop with the groceries, I saw two crows mobbing a red-tailed hawk over the tiny pond behind the hardware store, about two city blocks from here. Same hawk? Same crows? Also there was a kestrel sitting on the electric wires across the street where the local pigeon flock usually sits. The pigeons were elsewhere. I guess they didn't want to share their wire with a hawk not matter how small. That plus three kestrels I saw yesterday at Plum Island indicates to me that the spring hawk migration is in progress.

Once in awhile a red-tail or a kestrel will perch on the light pole or the wires directly outside my window. Though none have appeared there this spring. In the past I've looked up from my computer to see what Wilbur is so interested in and found myself face to face with a kestrel. Once I think I even saw a merlin on that wire but it left before I got a good enough look for a positive identification. Then there was the time the turkey vultures invaded in the fall... and during the flicker migration, flickers show up on that same light pole. My condo must be on the fringes of some migration routes.