I don’t remember when I first became aware of him, as an individual that is. There are countless hawks soaring above the prairie landscape, unnoticed, unheralded, unheeded. But every spring, when field work began in May and the cultivator stirred the mice from their winter burrows and their nests in the rows of combined straw, I noticed him.
Watching him broke the monotony of those long tractor hours. He was beauty in motion. Far above me, he would hover or soar in circles, watching, waiting, riding the wind or some unseen air current. But the movement in the clods and stubble of that small field mouse scampering for cover sent him into a dive that would have made a jet fighter shudder. Then, with the precision of a computer, he intercepted the mouse. He never missed. Just a few feet above the ground he came out of his dive, claws open, wings outstretched, and clutching his prey.
Sometimes he would land at the spot, settling and folding his powerful wings slowly and carefully. They were an essential part of his livelihood, like the arm of a quarterback, and it seemed as if he treated them with great care. Then he would eat his victim at his leisure, his hooked beak tearing the mouse from his claws into edible portions—sometimes almost inedible, if by chance I turned at the end of the field and came roaring by too close. With a final gulp and several long, constrictive neck-stretching swallows, he ungainfully began his ascent to the skies.
Sometimes he would carry his victim to some fence post or tree branch and eat it there, undaunted by the pestering and swooping crows who tried in vain to annoy him into leaving behind just one morsel.
“My hawk is back again,” I said at the supper table.
“Your hawk? What makes it your hawk?” my wife retorted.
“He’s the same one who was here last year,” l said, “I just know he is. Besides, he and I have a symbiotic relationship you know. We understand each other, too.”
“Hmph,” she said.
Then I described to the children his flight and, with gestures and sounds, I played the part of both the hawk and the mouse. I told them about his big bites that were really bad table manners. I told them that even if it seemed as though he was cruel, he was indirectly helping people, and sometimes life itself is cruel. They understood.
Day after day, during seeding, I would speculate on somewhat ridiculous thoughts about him. Did he circle clockwise or anticlockwise far above me? Did he always strike with his left claw, his right claw, or was he ambidextrous? Looking down from up there meant that one eye must be looking directly at the sun. Did he close it or change eyes, or look directly at the sun? Did he eat his mouse beginning at he head, or at the tail, or in the middle?
That spring, I also became aware that there were two of them. Perhaps only a little smaller in size—that was all the difference I could see in his mate. I was never sure which was which as they made their strikes, sometimes only a few feet from the cultivator. One day I saw him carry a mouse or two to her as she sat on a fencepost, preening her feathers. There I saw them mate, then they both rose to the heights where they were at home, graceful, strong, free, beautiful.
I had never discovered their nest before, but I did that year on July l. There is little wrong, I think, with spraying out a tankful of weed spray in the cool, still-dawning hours of Dominion Day. I felt a glow of history as I looked across the landscape. Besides, I was killing some weeds, and that made me feel good, too. Suddenly I saw the nest as I turned at a bush of poplar bordering the field, and its location made me chuckle out loud.
High atop a poplar tree that had once been struck by lightning, the very northwest edge of the bush, sat the unblinking female on her unpretentious nest of twigs. Not only to build a nest in a tree which had been split and partly killed by lightning, but also to bear the full brunt of the prevailing winds and rains seemed almost foolhardy. Perhaps its very location typified his nature—fearless almost to the point of recklessness. Or perhaps it was to instill the sound and feel and very taste of the wind into his offspring so that they could ride on its effort, conquer its force, feel its power.
During summer fallowing operations, he followed me to every field. Some days his pickings were slim, and I wondered how he managed on all the days he got no help from me at all, and how he managed to keep his family supplied.
Haying was better. Mice were more plentiful, especially when we baled slough hay. He seemed to know just where a mouse should be, as if he had waited all summer for just this opportunity. Sitting on some dead tree branch he would suddenly take off and, without even gaining height or circling, he could swoop down on his prey, knowing it would be there. He liked to sit on the pyramid stacks of bales, often eating there, or preparing his mouse for the flight back to the nest. Sometimes the children found one of his large feathers with their dull brown and white stripes, and pretended they were Indian braves, just as the real Indians had probably done with the feathers of his ancestors. He disliked our dog, Buddy, who despite my reprimands, chased him from the bales or interfered with his hunting just by being in the way. On the ground, or just taking off, the hawk was ungainly and awkward; once high in the air, he was king of the heights.
Near the end of the haying season, I saw his young. Only two, I think, not more than three. They sat on fence posts and waited for mother or father to bring them more. Their appetites were almost insatiable. Soon they were flying to the spot where either he or she had landed, and eating there. Once I threw a dead mouse to one of the young from the stooker, but it went without notice. Their eyes saw only, and they seemed to react only, to the movement of their prey.
In the beginning of September, I began swathing. On the first round of the first field, my mind was on the operation of the swather and on the stand of grain, but as I looked back to check the size and shape of the swath, I saw a mouse running toward the grass at the edge of the field. “Well boy,” I thought, ‘If you would have been watching now and seen me start swathing, you could have had a meal.” At that instant a shadow seemed to cross the sun. Looking back again, I saw him—feet and wings outstretched—standing on the headland, a triumphant gleam in his all-seeing eyes. His seeming omniscience and omnipresence sent a shiver down my back.
It was several weeks later, in the beginning of October, that it happened. It was the first day of the duck-hunting season. Farmers aren’t too fond of ducks eating their grain in the fall, but they aren’t too fond of hunters either. Ducks don’t open your gates, or dig holes in your fields, or scatter empty beer bottles around. I was coming down the road with the combine after finishing a field when I saw the car on the road—sporty, expensive, two hunters inside. Duck hunters always travel in pairs or parties. The driver got out, young, dressed and equipped to the letter, from the red cap to the new boots and ammunition belt. A wide friendly grin was on his face as he motioned me to stop. “Improving farmer-hunter relations,” I thought. “Good idea.”
“Hi,” he said as he mounted the ladder to the combine cab. “We’re looking for a good place to hunt. Ducks been doing a lot of damage around here?”
“Not very much this year,” I said, “but there are usually quite a lot of ducks gathering at that big slough three-quarters of a mile north. You could try out there.”
“Right. Thanks,” he said. “Incidentally, that chicken hawk won’t be getting any more of your chickens. We shot him just up the road and hung him on the fence. Sure was a big one.”
The realization was slow to hit me.
“That was no chicken hawk and I don’t have any chickens,” I said weakly. “Hawks are good. They kill a lot of mice and gophers every year.” I was talking like I do to my little girl Joyce, when I am trying to explain something as simply as possible. “You should never shoot a hawk—never. Hawks are good, always remember that.”
“Oh—sorry,” he said, taken somewhat aback. “Well, we’ll try that slough like you say.” And they were gone.
I drove home with the combine, my weakness turning to anger, scarcely glancing at the large form and wings fluttering feebly from the top strand of wire, like some grotesque crucifixion. I threw the spade into the back of the pickup and drove back. He was even larger than I had thought. I buried him near the centre of the large stubble field next to the nest. I wouldn’t remember exactly where, just which field.
Then I went home, and in my heart I felt a heaviness.