michaellaszlo.com » Hawk Eats Duck

I was driving to the University of Waterloo when I saw this hawk chowing down near a busy intersection. It was a messy eater, scattering bright red gobbets as it tore into the carcass. Traffic streamed by on either side of the median without distracting the hawk from its dinner.

I returned on foot with my camera and approached the hawk confidently, for it was familiar to me from many encounters on campus. I had first seen this juvenile red-tailed hawk the previous summer as it flew into the woods with a squirrel impaled on its talons, the rodent’s tail fluttering behind like a grim banner. It later sailed out of the woods sans cargo and caught a thermal draft with two or three languid wingbeats. It drifted upward in ever-widening circles, making no apparent effort except for some tilting motions, rising into the sky until it became too small to see.

As I began taking these pictures with my buzzing and beeping camera, the hawk finally looked up from its duck tartare. It seemed to resent my presence as never before. On previous occasions when I followed it around campus, it had allowed me to come within four or five feet before edging away. Once, it flew directly toward me, clearing the top of my head by mere inches. Another time, it nearly brushed my legs as it swooped down on a squirrel that I had startled from a garbage bin. Perhaps most remarkable was the way it flew through heavy pedestrian traffic in front of the library, gliding easily at knee level without attracting much attention.