Pigeon for breakfast
As I was walking to work this morning through our urban/suburban neighborhood I heard a rustling to my right. I turned to see something astonishing: a bird flying away with another bird gripped below it. It looked almost like a big ball of flapping feathers. The next second I realized it was a young, fairly small red tailed hawk lifting a pigeon across the street and up to a nearby tree. Both birds were about the same size, with the hawk having something like a two-foot wing span, about half the size of most adult red tailed hawks in this part of the world. The hawk landed in the tree limbs up about 15 feet above me and started to tear the pigeon apart, eating it. I pulled out my sketchbook and started to draw what I saw. The sketch below it was from memory as it flew past my shoulder on its way to the tree. I was treated to my own personal National Geographic special in the middle of the city.
posted by Anthony at 5:45 PM
3 Comments:
I suppose these things are happening around us all the time without notice. Thanks for taking the time to sketch and tell, it's very interesting and satisfying.
Awesome! Now you are crossing over into "reportage". Very cool. The only thing I'd add is a tiny hint of red blood to the feeding up in the tree. Both sketches and the text below have the same great on-the-spot energy.
Years ago Lisa & I were walking through an alley in Old Town Pasadena on a Friday night and heard what sounded like a punch above us. We looked up and saw a pigeon falling to his death at our feet just as an owl landed on a nearby wall as if to say "move along. That's my dinner..."
I should have drawn it!
Nicely done.
nice drawings, and good story. I love to see bits of surprising, and almost creepy nature! I was walking in downtown Long Beach, and saw something swoop down, out of the corner of my eye, it was a hawk, and it grabbed something (a rodent of some kind?) from a dirt planter and flew low into the dark mouth of an adjacent parking garage, where I have often parked. I felt like I had just seen a vampire abduct someone in broad daylight. I never really felt the same about that parking garage. . .
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