Blogging at the university

I'm in Kat's office, waiting for her to get out of class. She's teaching a one-night-a-week class, so I'm here until 9:30pm! I'm sleepy already.

Today I saw a red-tailed hawk here on campus; this is the third time I've seen him. It's easy to find him, because the crows go NUTS when he's around, cawing and flying all around him, trying to scare him off or something. But he's a pretty cool customer, just staying put and ignoring them. After all, he's a hawk. They're crows--Heckle and Jeckle may have been wise guys, but real crows just aren't that scary. (Well, maybe in The Birds)

The first time I saw him he was high in a birch tree, just hanging out about an hour before sunset. Crows were going crazy. The second time, however, was much more memorable: He was perched on a branch of a tree that stands about six feet from the second-floor window of a student lounge here on campus. He let me walk right up to the glass. He looked right at me, and we held one another's gaze for about 20 seconds. I remembered that line about looking into the abyss and having it look back into you--a scary thought. But this was a living, breathing hunter looking at me, not as a meal but as just an object in his view. I like to think he was curious in a way, wondering how I could be up there with him. But he just looked at me.

Then he went back to the business of puffing himself up to stay warm. He sat there for about an hour, with me leaving and coming back to watch him. He left when some people spotted him from the ground and began whooping and carrying on (okay, they were little kids; I don't blame them--but their parents could have shushed them!).

Of course I didn't have my camera. Kat's advisor took a picture; I'm hoping it'll come out and I can show you what it looked like from the window. Check back soon.