A hawk has discovered our flock of chickens and has killed two in the past few days. The first went missing on Thursday, and I found her on Friday. The second got killed yesterday, within only an hour or so of roaming about the yard. I didn’t bother to bury her. I’ve dug three graves for chickens already this year, and I figured that the hawk was hungry. I might as well let my poor dead hen go to feed the creature that killed her.
Once a hawk has found out that you have a reliable source of food in the form of your pet chickens, it tends to pick them off one by one until they’ve all been killed, at least that’d what I’ve heard. We’ve been lucky enough to never have a problem with hawks before. But now, after losing two to the road and two to hawks, I’ve decided to keep the remaining ten penned in their small 3.5 x 5.5 foot enclosure. It’s not fun for them, but I don’t want to lose any more of them.
I’ve always loved birds. I think that if I were less art-inclined and more science-inclined, I might end up being an ornithologist. I love my chickens so very much. Yet yesterday when I saw the hawk for the first time fearlessly sitting on a low branch not twenty feet away, I felt at first a grudging respect, then admiration and awe.
It is a small hawk. Perhaps a Cooper’s Hawk or a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, I’m not sure which. It is agile, and as I said, almost fearless. When I ran at it, shouting, it lazily took off only to land in a tree a few feet further away from me. The second time I ran it off, I yelled and hit our large wind chimes. Only then did it startle and fly in a large half circle through our neighbors’ yard to a different tree.
According to our Animal Speak book by Ted Andrews, hawks, particularly Red Tail hawks, mate for life. When a hawk comes into your life, it may be signalling you toward your deeper creative purpose, helping you learn to soar, or reminding you to use your eyes and look out for opportunities. Since a hawk’s talons and beak tend to be so prominent, a hawk may also show that you have the ability to tell off your enemies, either in constructive ways or in more destructive ways.
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