The Hawk Returns

and how to weaponize your joy

When renaming this newsletter, I ought to have included some fox content. The photo above is from April of last year, at the same woods that Suzanne and I followed fox prints in the snow a few weeks ago. It could be the same fox!

Foxes are great animals to observe in the suburbs, as they have adapted well to human habitation, perhaps only behind rodents and crows in that regard. They may have even followed the rodents first, and stayed for the chickens. I’ve spoken about why I feel a kinship with foxes before, but one reason is that they are “not just one thing.” They are Catlike Canines, as one book title put forth. The one above is defending a den from a large dog and its human walking the path fifty or so yards away.

Another creature that has adapted to humanity is the Cooper’s Hawk, which delights in perching above bird feeders and looking to make a snack out of the snackers eating seeds and suet there. I was alerted to this one by a tiny Downy Woodpecker laughing loudly, as if to say, “I see you!”

I had a visit last February from what may be the same bird! The first photo below is from February 2024. Honestly, comparing the two photographs, I can’t tell any difference, but I’m hardly a hawk expert. The second photo is a much larger (possibly female?) that visited in October last year, and shot a dookie at me as I focused my camera.

Same Cooper? and a Huge Female post-poop

We get Red-tailed hawks and Bald Eagles here as well, and Great Horned Owls have been sighted, just not by me. This may be why we don’t have many sightings of Pileated Woodpeckers, which are large prey of these raptors. I’ve seen Pileateds in northern New Jersey and in Delaware, and they are more common across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. I’m terribly envious of Laura Erickson, who gets them at her suet feeders:

BB Update

Writer Elizabeth McCracken writes wonderfully about her morning swims at Barton Springs in Texas, which she takes early in the morning; she spotted a few “skirtling raccoons” the other day, and while that word evokes “scuttling” and “skirting,” it put a different image in my mind, which I was compelled to doodle:

Elizabeth was also the inspiration for the star-pirate Captain Grackle McCracken in Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse, at least in name. I wrote the opening paragraph to the next Vyx book the other day, and I hope it will stick. The first book was a hopeful vessel for all my anger and anxiety during a similar time. If the chapter holds, I will begin posting them here weekly, like I did with the first book. The ICE raids have begun, and that’s how the first book starts… with Vyx on a journey to free their parents:

I think Substack is a uniquely ideal platform for serial writing, and I’ve been enjoying the memoir of nature filmmaker and photojournalist Charlie Hamilton James here very much. He shared the entire film My Halcyon River, a groundbreaking film that focused on the otters, ducks, and kingfishers in his backyard river, which may help you find the beauty not far from your own home:

And if you don’t subscribe to Easy by Nature, you may have missed his second post on Whooping Cranes, which is even more marvelous than the first:

Peace on the Wing

A reminder from Rebecca Solnit, via sara by the season:

Rebecca Solnit in Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power, writes, “Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”

this time around

As I told my friend Johnny, using Jersey Italian-American slang… “they want us to be mizzerab!” (That’s “miserable,” for you merigons.) The playbook is to create misdirection and outrage every day, to overwhelm us and foment despair.

Your joy is a shield. Your joy is a weapon. Your joy drives them mad.

Use your joy wisely. Share it with those who need succor. Flaunt it before those who will shiver with rage in its beautiful light.

Stay foxy, my friends.