Hawk Tree
We’ve owned this piece of land west of Green Bay for
37 years now; 35 of those years we have lived in the home that we built on it. We own just a smidge over five acres. I don’t know how many years before our
purchase the land stopped being farmed, but there were still old corn stalks
scattered here and there when we walked the land before deciding to make an
offer on it.
The fact that the land had been farmed until recently
was the reason that our property had exactly two trees on it; the rest was open
field. The two trees were cottonwoods;
one looked ancient, the other was only about half-grown. Both of the trees grew along the back
property line. The old farm fence didn’t
really clarify whether the two trees were really ours or not as it seemed to
have run right through the middle of those trees when the fence was still
standing. At the point on history when
our family staked our claim, the fence was really just a series of fence posts,
all of them broken and pushed over with time.
You rarely were able to walk to that part of our
property without getting wet feet, so I rarely did so. We could see both trees back then from the
backyard and the kitchen windows. The
trees, especially the larger one, commanded attention most every evening after
dinner. That’s when the kids would be
washing the dishes and looking for distractions. That’s when we’d get our report, “There’s a
hawk in the Hawk Tree!” The kids had named
the old cottonwood the Hawk Tree because there always seemed to be a hawk of
some sort perched there.
Most evenings I would then go to the window in an
attempt to identify our winged guest of the evening. I kept a small pair of binoculars on the window
sill to aid in sorting it out. The vast
majority of the sightings were of red-tailed hawks, but enough times to make it
interesting it was something else. More
than once, we have hosted bald eagles.
The loudest visitor wasn’t the bird itself. That was the evening when about fifty crows had
found a great-horned owl in the tree and they raucously harassed him for the
better part of an hour until he finally flew off.
I usually remember to at least glance over at the Hawk
Tree on my return from my morning walk.
The big tree stopped budding leaves over fifteen years ago. Many of the smaller limbs have snapped off in
the winds, and even the large limbs have begun to break off in chunks. But rarely do I go by when some bird of prey
is not there, perched and waiting. I prefer it that way; it’s comforting
somehow. The morning I took the picture
above, there was a smaller bird of prey visible on one of the limbs. I guess from the size it may be the
Merlin that hangs around the yard fairly often.
Whoever he is, he looks vigilant.
“Son of man, I have appointed you a
sentinel for the house of Israel. When
you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.” Ezekiel 3:17
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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