Where are the birds?
Well, many of them are gone: off to the tropics, to the mountains of Mexico, to the rainforests of South America. Apparently it’s worth the migratory journey, and it’s not as if there aren’t dangers in remaining. If the winter woods seem bereft of birds, it may be due to the presence of one particular bird: a patiently perched predator.




In fact, we get lots of hawks this time of year, for even as “our” birds go south, others that usually range to our north come down, considering the local climate mild enough for their tastes. Mostly we see the familiar Red-tails, but the two smaller accipiters are also regulars: the Sharp-shinned and the Cooper’s Hawk. These are agile woodland raptors, adept at chasing avian prey through mazes of close-packed trees. Much rarer is their big cousin, the Northern Goshawk, a truly formidable predator, combining the power and size of a Red-tail with the woodcraft of the accipiter genus. If I were a sparrow I’d hide too, but since I’m not, I was happy to get my first look at a Goshawk when this obliging immature bird made the unusual decision to hang around the Park for a few days.




The photos aren’t great, the top one being taken by holding the little camera up to the binocular eyepiece, but you can get some idea of the majesty of the hawk, and also of how easily even a bird with a forty-one inch wingspan can disappear into the trees in the blink of an eye.




But this is Winter: the season of disappearance…