Are you a hawk, crow, or Canada Goose?

meeting feathered friends at the well today

“You need today because there is more – because yesterday was not enough. Believe there is more to see and feel and do – and try your best to see it, feel it, do it. Keep moving.

                        Maggie Smith – Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change

the well of today – A QUESTION AND OBSERVATION

Are you a hawk, a crow, or a Canada Goose? Or perhaps, since they are quite remarkable birds, would be delighted to be a mix?

Driving home from an errand today in a bit of spacious country, I happened to see all three in a span of just a few minutes. The got me wondering: “Which one am I? Or do I have a little bit of all of them in me?”

Initially, I thought about the pattens in my life, musing about preferences of presence. When in the company of only myself, I am like the hawk.  With a small group, I am more like the crows, often seeing 4 to 6 of them flying one after the other to a same location or landing on the grass together. They don’t have to be close, but they usually come and go together.  Then there are the Canada Geese, which in the moment of the sighting were a group of 100 or so in a field, very close together.

GOING DEEPER

There is something in these 3 sightings that has continued to occupy my mind, especially since the past few years when along time like the hawk has been far more the model of my life. Does the hawk ever crave more company? Does it ever want to go out with a few others? Who knows? Maybe there are hawk gatherings no one has ever seen.

As life began to open up after the couple of years of isolation, I began to crave being a bit more like the crows, at least in the company of one more person and two or three or four would be ok, too, if in a place where we could spread out if needed. Except for in their nests, the crows never seem to be on top of each other. Rather, they kind of go along together and chat but give each other space.

The Canada Geese on the other hand, I almost always see in large groups. Who can tell one from the other? They move together, sit together, go to the streams to drink together, live with their goslings together and seem very close knit – one gigantic family. I never had that big of a family or that kind of family closeness. And in terms of sheer numbers, I still feel wary of being in too big of a crowd inside. Maybe being like the geese in the outdoors with the wide-open space and fresh air would be ok.

Thinking past the “number,” I began to ponder which qualities I like of each type of bird, not just like, but truly envy – full envy! Especially the hawk, I have to say.

Play along with me and think about whether you have preferences for the traits you’d like to magically discover in yourself as I cite a few facts/

Photo courtesy of Carlos Veras on Unsplash

HAWKS

The hawk’s vision is 8x better than humans and its hearing is 4x greater.

Being that I just got a new prescription for my glasses and wear two hearing aids, both are infinitely appealing, especially the hearing.

The hawks have calls and screams, which I did not know. The calls are the communication hawk to hawk and the screams ward off predators. Hmmm…

Photo courtesy of Stup Crou on Unsplash

CROWS

Proportionately, crows’ brains are bigger than humans. Crows are extremely smart and are good at improvising. They can even change dialects if they move into other crow territories. That is, obviously, with a computer program that they practice over and over again.

Crows can identify human faces, so you do not want to get on the wrong side of one.

They also can figure out traffic lights. One story told of crows putting a nut in front of traffic at a red light, letting the cars crack the nut and the flying down to get the meat of it when safe. It is hard to believe but has apparently been witnessed. So, a certain clever astuteness, I’d say.

When a crow dies, there is a funeral and often up to 100 crows will attend.

Young crows often help raise newborns by bringing food an also help defend the nest.

I had the immense privilege, truly, of observing a crow’s nest a couple of years ago, watching for weeks the raising and care of the young, to say nothing of the defense team that went after the hawk each time it came near. Crows are notorious for fending off predators.

Photo courtesy of Chris Robert on Unsplash

CANADA GEESE

Goslings can learn to swim at one ay old!

Geese do not back down when feeling threatened. That tenaciously stand their ground.

In their traditional V-shape flying formation, while it looks like they are just one behind the other, each goose flies a bit above the one in front of it to reduce wind resistance.

The leader is not meant to lead forever. When it gets tired, it has full permission to go to the back of the group and another one takes over.

A goose has between 20,000 and 25,000 feathers, all of which molt each year. Wow…what if our skin was replaced each year? The downside is that the flight feathers shed all at once and during that process, a goose is grounded for 3-5 weeks.

FINAL THOUGHTS

What started as a simple and usually quick noticing and musing before going on to the “next thing” turned into hours of truly being stunned by the beauty of nature and the miracles of each living creature, in particular on this day, these three birds.

These birds called me into their presence today and it was as if I heard their unique calls - the cry of the hawk, the caw with rattling and clucking of the crow, and the honking of the geese.

There is so much to learn, to respect, to love, to be mesmerized by, to bring us into even more intentional watching, listening, noticing, and pondering.

I especially think the Canada Geese have something to teach us about leadership, knowing when it is time to take a break, and being given full permission to take it while others step up to lead – co-active leadership at its best.

The next post might be about the ladybugs that are visiting my kitchen and how fast their little legs can go. I had no idea.

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