Outside my kitchen window, breakfast buffet
at my three feeders – a gaggle of winter birds
busily graze for favorites.  Some of the regulars are here –
Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, dressed in usual fashion –
he in flashy red, she in olive drab.
White-throated sparrows, their referee-striped heads bobbing,
forage on the ground for spilled seed.
At the suet, a downy woodpecker,
perfect black-and-white with red-streaked head,
looks like he was lifted from a coloring book
before he was finished.  Here and there some juncos,
and a purple finch.

Suddenly, as though from a gunshot,
they scatter in unison.  They know the red-tailed hawk
is back in the neighborhood.  How do they sense him –
do they hear the distinctive “Scree!”,
or see his shadow on the ground?
Or is there some other sense, a magnetic disturbance,
a certain wing-shifted air
that we humans will never understand?

I watch all this from my kitchen,
hoping none of my guests have become the hawk’s breakfast,
then return to my scrambled eggs.

03/22/2007

Posted on 03/23/2007
Copyright © 2026 Bruce W Niedt