Sunday Morning

After the powerful storms that blasted through here yesterday, we woke up to a glorious spring day. I went out back and spent about a half hour doing garden chores, then made a cup of tea to test my new backpacking stove (made it yesterday while stuck inside - it works like a champ).

As I was sitting there, enjoying the tea and sunshine, I noticed unusual bird calls from the woods behind the house. I grabbed my monocular and spent a relaxing hour watching the hawks play. There were several - more than three, maybe as many as six - zooming around each other, circling high before diving in close strafing runs, just generally having fun. There was no mid-air attacking or general agressiveness that I saw. A couple of times, I spied pairs sitting side by side in the top branches of the trees, making me think it may have been mating displays going on.

The other clue were those unusual bird calls. Those hawks weren't making ordinary hawk sounds. They sounded like a dog's squeaky toy. Sharp and high pitched and wheezy, kind of a goofy sound for a bad-ass bird like a hawk to be making.

I guess love makes fools of us all.