A Hawk's Tale
by Lorem J. Fause
A Hawk's Tale
Copyright (C) 2010 by Lorem J. Fause
Drawings by Lorem J. Fause
Smashwords edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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by the Author
This story is an homage to red-tailed hawks, a majestic bird of prey that has of late flourished in the presence of human development. My interest in red-tails started during my late teens and early twenties when I commuted to and from a local university while living at my parents house. I would see them perched on telephone poles along rural road, and soaring on the thermal currents over fields. After reading “Birds of Prey” by Leslie Brown, I started looking for red-tails in other places. I saw the tracks of their wings in the snow as they pounced after a squirrel. My brother and I scaled 60 foot oak trees to watch the growth of a baby red-tail from a downy puff of feathers to a fledgling, high in its eyrie.
I make no apologies for the story's anthropomorphic slant. Unlike my Deer Story, where the first person narrative purposefully conveys an understanding of an intelligent and social animal, here it is merely a convenience. Hawks are far less a social animal than deer, and are seemingly much less intelligent. I do not make the bold claims about hawks that I have made about deer. Hopefully this story remains truthful to the nature of the hawk, aside from the telling in the first person.
July 10, 2010
A Hawk’s Tale
The great white owl is softly fluttering by on her way to a daytime perch. She has had a long night of hunting. Twilight is giving way to the morning's first light. It's time for a hawk to wake up his senses and get started with the day. In spite of the bitter cold, it was a pleasant night. The breeze was gentle enough to permit steady sleep high up in this favorite roosting tree. Sleep would be impossible here on a windy night. Perhaps if the wind stays down I'll return here tonight.
It's an easy chore for me to preen my downy feathers in this cold winter air. They fluff up from their hackles to give an extra measure of insulation from the frigid air. First, I clean the soft downy feathers on my underside. They will keep me warm while I later preen my wing and tail feathers for efficient flight. Each feather must be inspected. Ruffled feathers must be carefully put back together so that all of their barbules meet the corresponding hooks. It is painstaking work. Those of us who fly by soaring must keep our flight feathers in peak condition to take advantage of the subtlest forces in the air currents.
Here's a feather that is damaged beyond hope. It was permanently damaged a few days ago when a squirrel that I was trying to grab tore at my wing with its long claws. Luckily, only a few feathers were damaged. I should have been more aggressive in my attack. Had the squirrel ripped my wing muscles, I might never fly again. We hawks must fly to live.