Hawk Talk & Rattler Rattle

I've started trying to "talk" to "my hawk," the broadwing that so often swoops around these parts. It curved gracefully up in front of me as I was going back up the hill to the house from the garden one morning (about 10-12 days ago) and perched on a tulip poplar branch.

First, I tried a human version of the high-pitched screech that is this bird's signal. Click on the following to listen:

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/view_default.asp?sortBy=has+audio&viewType=list&curFamilyID=218

Then, I tried just old-fashioned English, and told it that our friend Honor had recently rescued one of its brethren, when it surfaced dazed and confused on the side of Warwoman Road. Click on the July 10 entry at the following site for rescue details:

http://silvermoonfrog.blogspot.com/

Well, I'm not sure if my hawk heard this talk, but at least it did not fly away right away. I feel that it heard something. Now, I am trying to hear what it has to say to me. This is an interesting exercise for one usually so "linear."

More recently, we find that a good-sized timber rattlesnake has taken up domain under one of our wooden decks, as a worker found out last week. Its high-pitched rattle is distinctive and pressing and puts you on definite alert when you hear it. This rattler is about as thick as a man's forearm. Big. Territorial. Likes to let you know that it is there and not to be too disturbed.

Wonder if he's the same one that, as a juvenile, used to hang out on our pile of two-by-sixes (see post for March 19, 2009.)

That is all for today.