My Father and the Mother Chickenhawk Julia Patt
On May 8th, 2005 around noon, a commotion arose in the kitchen of my family's home in central Maryland. My mother called for my siblings and me to come help, to go get gauze and disinfectant. My father was sitting at the kitchen table with a bloody towel pressed to his head. One of the two red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) who live on our property had attacked my father while he was working in our small family garden. She - or so we guessed from the larger size of the bird - left three shallow cuts on his scalp, which soon stopped bleeding. It was not his injuries that worried my mother, however; it was the hawk's behavior. In nearly eighteen years of residence surrounded by undeveloped land, our family had never had such an encounter with a wild animal. We did not understand what motivated the hawk to strike. That particular pair had lived in the vicinity of our home for at least ten years; they should have been accustomed to the presence of humans. So why had the hawk attacked my father? Red-tailed hawks, like their other buteo cousins, generally consume small mammals, including squirrels, mice, rabbits; reptiles such as lizards and snakes; and birds, especially chickens, hence its colloquial name. According to the Maryland park rangers, who were kind enough to answer our questions, it was unlikely that the hawk thought that my father was intruding on its hunting territory in any way. They did advise the introduction of a rival predator into the vicinity, however, as hawks and other birds of prey tend to be wary of large, mammalian predators such as wolves, coyotes, and cougars. Though our pointer mix, Abby, doesn't much resemble a coyote to us, the ranger told my mother that her presence in the yard would make the hawk think twice about attacking another person. He also suggested that we all wear hats while outside. My father's assailant (whom my mother worried would soon strike again, given my brother's propensity to ignore precautions before diving outside to play baseball) weighed no more than three pounds. Her wingspan was slightly less than a pair of outstretched human arms, about five feet across. If my father had looked up the moment before she struck, he would have seen the several broad, dark stripes across her chest: one of the hawk's identifying markings aside from her russet-colored tail feathers. Our hawks (or so we like to think of them) belong to the buff morph categorization; they have pale underbellies that show these distinct stripes - this color variation is most common to the Mid-Atlantic. As red-tailed hawks live throughout North America and migrate as far south as Mexico, a variety of camouflages are necessary for their survival. Not that one needs a particular coloring to sneak up on unsuspecting gardener. The hawk's call, which my father heard quite clearly before the female of our pair struck him in the head, is likewise distinctive. This shrill scream is frequently used in movies for any number of birds of prey. Red-tailed hawks can frequently be heard while soaring; their raspy cry lasts from 2-3 seconds. While mating or declaring territory, they make a softer trilling noise which is also somewhat hoarse, like a songbird with laryngitis. They are often heard to make this noise by hikers in wooded areas who pass by their nests and perches. * A week later, with my brother's John Deere hat pulled low over my eyes, I knelt at the far end of our deck, under my mother's hummingbird feeder where several scores of ants had met their sticky and untimely demise, and stared through my father's old 20x50 United binoculars at the red-tailed hawks' nest. It was a heavy structure of twigs and leaves located between the forked branches of one of our larger tulip poplars - tall trees are fairly common homes for hawks' nests, though red-tailed hawks can make their homes in cactuses, on cliffs, and in man-made structures. The poplar grew up from the hill that curved down from the house so that the nest itself looked over our family's garden where my father had been working. The house is several yards away from the garden and I knelt behind one of my mother's weigelia bushes just to be safe. Provoking the hawks was not my intention, and we had since determined the source of the mother bird's sudden displeasure with my father. Every so often, there would be a shuffle of movement in the nest. This was the more active of the two gray hatchlings, whom the adult hawks were ardently protecting. The second hatchling was less antsy and sometimes would stare back at me through my binoculars with what I supposed to be a knowing look. I see you, her expression seemed to say. Periodically, their mother or father - it is difficult to differentiate at a distance - would arrive at the nest with their next meal. Red-tailed hawks, like most birds, engage in equal partnerships. The male is just as obligated as the female to look after the young, feed them, and protect the nest. After the eggs hatch, this is especially his responsibility as the female goes off to hunt and replenish herself after nest-sitting. Some bird experts hypothesize that red-tails mate for life, given their tendency to reuse old nests and return to a particular area after migrating. My family may call the red-tailed hawks “ours” because they live on our land. However, it seems more reasonable to assume that we live on theirs. It was the second week. The chicks were downy and awkward looking due to their size and bony appendages. They reminded me of adolescent boys after they shoot up for the first time; their clothing suddenly too short for their long arms and legs. They were still buff and gray colored, blending in with the bark and twigs - without the binoculars, it was nearly impossible to spot them from a distance - and Peterson's Guide to Birds revealed that they would not acquire their trademark red rumps until the age of three. The larger of the chicks, who we assumed to be a girl, had discontinued her staring contests with me on my afternoon observations and instead took an interest in the environment around her. Hatched slick and helpless, young hawks must quickly adapt to the world. The parent hawks continued to bring meals, including rabbits and chipmunks from the surrounding woodlands. After the initial attack, they had ignored our household, possibly due to our lessened presence in the yard, though I'm sure Abby must deserve some credit. On afternoons after school, I often assumed my position under the hummingbird feeder and observed the chicks' interactions with each other and our yard's inhabitants. They seemed especially interested in our cat, who quickly returned inside under the shadow of the parent hawks. And, though they would likely never meet again in the wild, the chicks were almost humanly attentive to each other, reminding me of older and younger siblings. When one began flapping its wings, accidentally at first, the other joined in. The last thing they would do together was learn to fly. Red-tailed hawk chicks remain in the nest for several weeks, but they begin to fly after a month or so. Once their feathers and skills have developed sufficiently, they leave the nest and their parents and seek out their own territories, which often cover several acres. In this adult world, the adolescent hawks learn to hunt and fend for themselves in the wild, but they must also discover the dangers of the human world: cars, power-lines, poachers who ignore protective migratory bird acts. On a warm Sunday in June, as the mercury in the thermometer edged upward, our young red-tailed hawks wheeled out of the nest for the final time. Red-tails do not soar as buzzards do, but if they catch a thermal updraft, they are content to ride it high above the earth. As the two chicks - still somewhat fuzzy, grey, and gawky - left us, I felt a small pang of sadness. They were flying, flapping through the trees, their newly working wings seeking such a rise of warm air. Then, they were gone. As May approaches, my father has taken to wearing baseball caps again and my family is ever on the lookout for another set of hawk chicks. I spotted a red-tail nest high in a maple farther into our forest, thankfully away from the garden. However, the hawk's dedication to their home territory has not diminished - they are Mid-Atlantic hawks and have less cause to migrate than their Northern brethren. Sometimes, even in the winter, we spot a winged silhouette against the sun, the cat skulks into the house, and the hawks' distinctive trill echoes through the trees.
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