Hooked
The kestrels returned in April and I kept them to myself for a few days, a blessing or omen I wanted to turn over like a smooth stone or a prayer. It’s no small thing, this appearance, this return. It is the second spring I’ve spent here after more than two decades in the home where my ex-husband and I raised our family. When the boys left the nest, I wanted to migrate, too. Here I am, light coming through tall windows, aspens and cottonwoods leafing out in spring fashion from my second floor perch.
“There you are,” I say, from my treetops to theirs. My body relaxes at the sight of them, though I am surprised each morning at their small size—the smallest of falcons native to North America. Their presence, by contrast, is large comfort.
I read a line in a book called The Meadow years ago, about an old man watching his meadow like people watch TV while they eat. “He’s hooked on the plot, doesn’t want to miss anything,” it reads, and I smile as I watch the kestrels, greedy.
Unusually, the female is the pretty one and I see her iridescent feathers take on the morning light creating a mirage of river flowing over rock. Her head is startling: black vertical stripes that cover the sides of her head and trace below her eyes, giving her the look of a tiny, masked mercenary, which she is, at least to the mice and voles below. She is getting ready to produce eggs, a mother warrior plunging into rodent entrails on the days her catch reaps flesh instead of insects. Her mate is always perched next to her or hunting. He is soft, tawny tan-gray. He is willing to give her the limelight and keeps an eye on her. Kestrels are monogamous and mostly mate for life, something fewer than half of humans do. They also return to their nests when they can, an instinct many of us share, taking refuge in the familiar.
I am surprised at how at home I feel in this rather urban space—no yard, no immediate forest to disappear into. I have to cross the busiest intersection in the state of Wyoming to get to a trail system, and I hear the cars whiz by below as a reminder. The old neon Gables sign is visible below the trees, as it is in the picture I took of the coyote outside this very window last fall. The kestrels ignore the car noise and the magpies who love to pester them. Above me, a hawk and raven play some airborne game of cat-and-mouse, and everything quiets as I take in the sky and all that moves through it.
When I come back to the tree branches, they are empty and for a moment I feel their absence like a hollow in my chest. Then the female returns, lights on the top branch, and begins lowering her head towards her grip on the tree. I expect to see her settle into her morning grooming routine. I expect to be rewarded with the fanning out of tail feathers, banded in black as dark as ancient night. I lift the binoculars to my eyes and am surprised instead to see small bits of flesh and fur fly as the falcon makes short work of her morning’s prey. Life is full of surprises. This was the final one for the rodent.
I get up to warm my coffee and go to work. When I return to the window, the branches are empty again, and so is the sky. I pretend my mind is made up of blue sky and make a point of noticing space, not absence.