Nature Tale

This morning when I looked out the bedroom window I saw a dead rabbit lying in the backyard. I felt sadness for the rabbit that had lost its life. But then I wondered how we would rid ourselves of the dead animal. Jon is sick with Covid right now and I am still recovering from it. And I did not relish the idea of having to dispose of a dead animal right now. Little did I know that I had entered in the middle of a

Nature Tale

when I saw the dead rabbit this morning. (Most of the story unfolds in this blog post. Some of the story is unknown.)

I busied myself with my morning routine and forgot about the rabbit. Because it was a lovely cool morning I decided to spend some time reading on the deck swing. As I headed out on the deck I heard a nearby bird making what I thought to be alarm calls. Then I looked towards the backyard and saw this sharp-shinned hawk on the ground in our backyard.

Oh! I went to get my camera with 100-400 mm lens and 1.4 extender. And I began photographing the hawk. Then I noticed that it was beside the dead rabbit that I had seen early this morning.

(Warning, though none of my photos are closeup and gory you will be able to see parts of the rabbit in some of them.)

First the hawk tried to pick up the rabbit and fly away with it. The hawk didn’t have the strength to lift off into flight with the rabbit.

Then it began to eat the rabbit, all of the time looking up in all directions to make sure that something would not attack it. I continued to watch the hawk and photograph it as it scanned the yard for other predators. I was so fascinated with the beauty of the beautiful raptor that I was mostly able to ignore that it was having a meal in front of me.

Soon I noticed two young squirrels, also in the backyard, carefully watching the hawk but not seeming to be too afraid of it. They appeared to be curious about it, watching it for some time. Finally they began scurrying back and forth across the yard, keeping a certain distance between themselves and the hawk. It was as if they knew they were not in danger because the hawk already had its prey.

I photographed and watched the scene unfold until finally the hawk had eaten enough that it was able to take off in flight with the remainder of the rabbit. It felt very strange to watch this scene unfold. It feels even stranger to write about it especially since I’ve been thinking a lot about how the cycle of life and how life feeds on life.

Photographing this nature tale felt like a prayer to me. I felt I was honoring the life and the sacrifice of life. The scene reminded me of Mary Oliver’s poetry and how she does not shy away from describing both the beauty and the reality of life and of death in nature.

The Real Prayers Are Not the Words, But the Attention That Comes First

The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted,
rode the wind.  Its eye at this distance looked
like green glass; its feet were the color
of butter.  Speed, obviously, was joy.  But
then, so was the sudden, slow circle it carved
into the slightly silvery air, and the
squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into
itself the sharp-edged wings, and the
falling into the grass where it tussled a moment,
like a bundle of brown leaves, and then, again,
lifted itself into the air, that butter-color
clenched in order to hold a small, still
body, and it flew off as my mind sang out oh
all that loose, blue rink of sky, where does
it go to, and why?

   — Mary Oliver

Later when I told Jon about the hawk and rabbit, he related that he had seen a hawk kill a rabbit very early this morning. He had not stayed around to see what happened next. But apparently something frightened the hawk away before it was able to either take or eat its prey. Perhaps it returned later when it felt that it was safe to do so. It’s possible that Jon saw a different hawk earlier this morning. We’ll never know exactly what happened.

But gaze at this wild beautiful hawk and the curious busy squirrels. There is beauty in it all.

May you walk in beauty.

This is my last photo of the hawk. It took flight carrying the remainder of the rabbit carcass with it.