Someone Is Watching Me: Cooper's Hawk

My husband and I were in the Barrens, on the closed road by the shooting range - he was jogging, I was walking, with camera - when I spotted a thick bottle shape in a nearby tree that can only mean one thing: hawk! I couldn't believe my good luck!

Of course, I stopped and snapped as many pictures as I could, meanwhile wishing fervently for my monopod, and not having it. So all of my shots were pretty well zoomed out, free-hand, and I was hoping I got a few decent ones. The hawk fixed me with its gaze. Steady, steady, steady on the camera, I admonished myself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Hold. Snap!

"Hawkeye!" I said to myself immediately. Which seemed funny to me, and timely, since my husband and I had just finished re-watching the 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans, starring a very young Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. (Hawkeye is the name of Day-Lewis's character; also Nathaniel.) A note for us photographers: the cinematography is breathtaking.

The hawk sat in the tree about 30 or 40 feet away and posed for me for the full seven minutes I stood there, snapping away. Isn't that spotty belly just amazing? My husband jogged past. I pointed to the hawk and said, "If you were tiny, that hawk would eat you!"

And then I quietly turned and walked away, leaving the hawk to its business, which I presumed included finding something lovely to eat for its lunch. When I got back home, I put the pictures up on Facebook and several friends identified it as a Cooper's hawk, Accipiter cooperii.

So there we go. Hello and farewell to Hawkeye, the Cooper's hawk.

For my soundtrack song, I have chosen my favorite tune from the soundtrack to the movie The Last of the Mohicans. I always thought the song was by Enya, and I could never find it!

But it turns out it is by Clannad, and so I found it and FINALLY bought it. (HA!!) So gorgeous. So haunting. So amazing. Every time I hear it, it gives me chills. Here is Clannad, with I Will Find You, which is the love theme from The Last of the Mohicans. Enjoy!

No matter where you go, I will find you
If it takes a long long time
No matter where you go, I will find you
If it takes a thousand years