A View To A Kill Averted

The bitter cold winds are here again, ripping our giant willow's hanging branch stings back and forth until many fall on our deck, a most unfavorable consequence of being so close to the willow and the winds coming across our lake. All the hundreds of backyard birds that frequent my feeders are gone for now. Even the Yellow-shafted flickers ( a large beautiful woodpecker if you don't know) have devoured all the remaining black sunflower seeds and hanging suet cakes. But this winter, there has been much to enjoy from my kitchen table and lakeside viewpoint. But now, the wind chill must be under a minus 10 degrees and getting worse.

One incident with a flying predator bird attempting to catch his breakfast here needs to be described as something indescribable. A contradiction of perspective, mine or those little backyard birds flying upward to avoid becoming that predator's meal one morning a couple weeks ago. Words sort of fail to come to tell how I saw it happen only a few feet and then inches from my indoor chair. Words fail because as it happened, the speed of the whole thing left a blur in my vision and too swift to even shout out a moment occurring in less the time it takes to let out a quick exclamation. Even my many years of being a witness and participant in many things wild did not prepare me for this eye to eye contact with an attacking male Goshawk, a fierce no holds barred predator of small birds.

The whole eye contact came within a second somewhere near 8:45am one fine low wind and bright morning a couple weeks ago. While sitting here usually writing in my journal about recent lake and weather events, suddenly and without any sound warning, all the feeding backyard birds lifted up as quickly as possible from their positions on the ground or on the varied feeders near the deck.

That's when I first spotted him going at top speed, all a blur to me. He was coming in only a couple feet off the ground between our giant willow and our deck to surprise any left over feeding birds there. Suddenly, and as surprised as he must have been, he was flying as a complete blur to my eyes into the same small kitchen window I was looking through. In an instant from first view of him he had lifted up at blurred speed within twenty feet up another eight feet to suddenly appear coming right for me to crash into the window. But first he had turn ninety degrees away from our deck doorway and only a foot away from it and come directly to my window view. I saw a blur and instinctively shut my eyes. In the twinkling of an eye, he had turned again only another foot from crashing and twisting sideways and then upside down another fifteen feet along our house wall going north again to freedom in the air. He had escaped in one blurred instant a fatal crash.

My fellow human companion in life, Nancy,  was sitting across the table from me with head down reading a magazine. Before I could let out a single cry to look, it was already over, the hawk was moving that fast. I really can't say any more about it. In all my years of viewing hunting hawks, I had never encountered such ability at such close quarters. It is very difficult to think of any other creature, even another bird, that at top speed could pull off such an instant maneuver to avoid death. I  sat stunned and remained speechless for quite a while, unsure if there were any appropriate words.