Hawk Gazing

(Click photo to view full size.)

(This hawk is not the same bird as Hopkin's windhover, but this raptor can also inspire awe.)

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord 

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Rock and Hawk

  by Robinson Jeffers

Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.

This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,

Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.

I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,

But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;

Life with calm death; the falcon's 
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15478#sthash.fwInHg0P.dpuf

Rock and Hawk

  by Robinson Jeffers

Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.

This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,

Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.

I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,

But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;

Life with calm death; the falcon's 
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15478#sthash.fwInHg0P.dpuf

Rock and Hawk

  by Robinson Jeffers

Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.

This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,

Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.

I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,

But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;

Life with calm death; the falcon's 
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15478#sthash.fwInHg0P.dpuf

Great Horned Owl

Young Great Horned Owl on Lamp Post

(Click on photo to view full size.)

The parents of the two young Great Horned Owls (see "Great Horned Owlets") have made themselves scarce, but the young ones are around most evenings.  This one was sitting on a lamp post in the front yard.  He (or she?) was looking in the other direction when I arrived and looked startled at first to see me, but seemed content for us to watch each other. 

Owl Peering

Barred Owl Peering

(Click photo to view full-size.)

The big barred owl outside the window was watching me from behind a veil of yellow raintree leaves. Be sure to view the full size photo to see the shine in his eyes.

Blossoming with Egrets

Our large Southern Magnolia trees (Magnolia grandiflora) have been having a good year, decorated all over with magnificent white blossoms a foot wide.  But they sometimes seem to bloom with something else as well — with egrets. 

Here is part of a cattle egret flock that settled high in one of the magnolias:

(Click to view full size.)

Great Horned Owlets

This is one of the Great Horned Owlets that we have been watching grow up, ever since one of them fell out of the nest and we had a dramatic owl rescue.

We have learned that crows habitually harass owls, so one way of locating the owls is to listen for the crows.  Here is one of the young owls, older now and able to fly, high in a tree, staring at me and ignoring the crow.  We were told that it is very unusual for the owl and the crow to sit together companionably like this.

Please click on these photos to view them larger — and notice the owlet's big yellow eyes.  I have read that if Great Horned Owls were as large as human beings, their eyes would be the size of oranges.  (See the Nature Conservancy.)

The same young owl, this time with the full moon.

Owls mostly do not get good press in the Bible, but here is a passage from Isaiah portraying the owls as honoring God:

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
    the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
    the people I formed for myself
    that they may proclaim my praise.

(Isaiah 43:19-21)

Peahen on Branch

(Click to view full-sized photo.)

The peacock was an early Christian symbol of the Resurrection.

Although the peahen is not as showy as her male counterpoint, she has a dignified beauty of her own. (The tuft of stray feathers that seems to be sticking out of her left side actually belongs to her chick, hidden behind her. )