I thought it was a drone. I was driving down the road and out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement. A dark object hovering or falling maybe. I live in the country, so drones aren’t the norm. Turning to get a better look, I saw that it was not a drone at all but a hawk. Not just any hawk, a red tail, in full dive, talons outstretched, wings folded back. It was stunning.

It was a flash. Just a few seconds. I had to turn my eyes back to the road to avoid swerving into the ditch. My heart wanted to slam on the breaks, do a U-turn, and grab my phone to capture the magnificence. Plus, I was curious to see what creature was the target of such deadly aim. However, I realized that by the time I safely maneuvered the car back, both predator and prey would be long gone.

A hawk’s dive when hunting tops out at speeds of 120 mph. This way they can ambush their prey without being discovered until it’s too late…if at all. A hawk can see prey from over a mile away. They often dive from over 100 feet. Silently. Stealthily. I love hawks. They surround my house in the tops of the trees. The Red Shoulders are a noisy bunch, screeching like siblings. There is a very vocal family in our area that squabbles every morning.

However, the Red Tails are different. They are quiet in comparison. Our neighborhood hawk, Hank, (Yes, I named him. Ha!) sits on the power lines to survey his domain. He is a big Red Tail and has been in our area for years…or maybe I should say we have been in his area. I think the rabbits in our yard are his main supply of food, but I have seen him on other wires nearby as well. The food supply in the pastures and woodlands around us is abundant. Hank isn’t the only Red Tail I have witnessed, he is just the most familiar one to me. We are neighbors.

Yet, as often as I have seen him, and as big as he is, I have never seen him dive. He obviously does it often. Yet, it is rare to catch him in the act. The hawk I saw yesterday was milliseconds from nabbing its prey. The speed was alarmingly fast. If he had missed his target somehow and hit the ground, that could’ve been the end of him. The precision is mindboggling to me. To fall from the sky at 120 mph and snatch a mouse, inches from the ground, and then hit the brakes, reverse course, and soar up again in a split second…just magnificent.

That is all. No lesson. No metaphor. Just a spectacular arial display which took my breath away that I wanted to share with you.