Carl Reader
I don't much care what anyone says: winter causes depression.
It's not just humans that suffer from this affliction.
I saw evidence today that birds do, too.
I was walking the dog today in the park when a Cooper's hawk flashed by me from behind, just over my left shoulder. He headed from the brambles by the side of the path, intent on flushing out a tiny sparrow for breakfast, but the sparrow had seen him coming and fled.
The hawk aborted his hunt, perhaps too disgusted with himself that he had been so easily detected.
He alighted in a sycamore fifty feet away, not really bothering to hide from me in its thick bare branches. He just sat there.
I took the shot from a distance, thinking I wouldn't get much of a chance to get a closer photograph of him.
To my surprise, he remained where he was as I walked toward him.
These birds almost never let a human so close. They'll fly off if they see a two-legged threat anywhere near.
This guy let me get closer and closer.
I didn't see much of a chance to get a decent shot of the bird, even though I was now twenty feet away. There were too many branches in front of him, and the light was not good.
Since he was waiting around, I gave it a try.
He didn't move.
This bird was definitely depressed. Here was a clear and present danger, me, and he didn't seem to care.
He was so depressed I think I might have reached up and taken him off that branch, and had my breakfast of him.
I felt for him. All he had wanted to do was grab a tiny bird out of the brambles, but he was frustrated even in that.
Was anything ever going to go right for him?
It's something we ask ourselves in the midst of winter on a daily basis. I was just getting over the flu, I had fallen on ice a month prior to this, I was poor, I was old, I was cold and hungry, I would probably have to move, none of my books was selling, I couldn't make any money from my nature photography and I was alone.
Worst of all, I was alone.
Imagine how much more difficult it had to be for this Cooper's hawk. He was likely suffering from all the things I was, plus he had to live outside in the cold.
He didn't have a refrigerator full of food at home and he didn't have a stove to cook it on.
No wonder he just sat there in his tree twenty feet away from me, not much worrying if he lived or died by this human's hand.
I stepped closer.
He came to his senses.
He flew toward my left the way he had come, but this time shot toward me and whooshed by as though to say, well, to hell with you. You failed to catch me, just as I failed to catch that little sparrow.
You're not going to have another chance.
He wasn't done with his depression yet, though.
He came to rest fifty feet behind me, out in the open on a branch stop the brambles.
It was as though he was taunting me to try to capture him.
I did my best.
My depression lifted as his did, too, for now he was in the sunlight and offered up a better picture.
I snapped away quickly, for I knew he had his heart back and was just toying with me.
Then he turned away from me and my depression.
I was no longer a threat.
And in another second, he took off, cured of his initial failure, having survived his failure and his encounter with me.
I headed home.
I felt better, too.
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