#CommuningWithNature

There was an island in the middle of my kitchen back in Wisconsin and I would be washing dishes and be able to look out the big garden window and see the perennial garden I had been working on.  There was a deck built from the kitchen wall, connected to the family room and extending about 14 feet and two wooden deck chairs sat at the end facing me. I am describing this because one day as I was at the sink, I looked out to see a hawk sitting on the back of one of the chairs looking in at me.  He sat there for quite a long while cocking his head in one direction or another.

This hawk had a history with me.  The year before a couple of hawks had spied my little pond in the perennial garden through the leafless trees in the early spring and had decided to make their home in the large maple tree growing near the corner of our house.  On one very hot day in July a very young hawk had either fallen out of its nest or been pushed out by one of its parents and was unable to take off from the ground.  I was concerned because there were a number of stray cats in the neighborhood and I thought he would be safer on the fence where his mom could see him.  So, I gently took him and placed him on the top of the wire fence and left, hoping his mom would come and retrieve him, soon.  In a few minutes he had lost his balance and was hanging on up-side-down, for his dear life, by his little claws.  I retrieved him and placed him on the ground under the lilac bush for shade.  I kept watch, but, when night came he was still there.  The next morning he was gone.  Some days later I saw him and his mom and dad flying to and from their home and occasionally they would sit on a branch and talk to me.  Yes, we did communicate and it was so much fun, me trying to chirp and the three squawking back.

When fall came they went south and I wondered if they would remember and return to the maple tree again.  Well, a family of hawks did make their home in a neighbor's tree the next spring and that is the spring I was referring to when a hawk came to visit me on my deck.  I just bet he was the youngster I had befriended the year before and was checking in on me.  We had bonded and he remembered and he would come and visit me occasionally and squawk at me from a branch and I would chirp back. I had made a friend, but next spring there were no hawks in the neighborhood. I guess a hawk's memory can go just so far.

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