The world is a mask that hides the real world.
Thatâs what everybody suspects, though the world we see wonât let us dwell on it long.
The world has ways - more masks - of getting our attention.
The suspicion sneaks in now and again, between the cracks of everyday existenceâ¦the bird song dips, rises, dips, trails off into blue sky silence before the note that would reveal the shape of a melody that, somehow, would tie everything together, on the verge of unmasking the hidden armature that frames this sky, this tree, this bird, this quivering green leaf, jewels in a crown.â¦
As the song dies, the secret withdraws.
The tree is a mask.
The sky is a mask.
The quivering green leaf is a mask.
The song is a mask.
The singing bird is a mask.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
peregrine v. hawk
Falcon 1, hawk 0
South Bend peregrine sends bigger bird tumbling to the ground.
by SUE LOWE, South Bend Tribune, 9 June 2005
South Bend peregrine sends bigger bird tumbling to the ground.
by SUE LOWE, South Bend Tribune, 9 June 2005
SOUTH BEND -- Apparently speed wins over size in the bird world.
One of the peregrine falcons who live in downtown South Bend knocked a bigger red-tailed hawk out of the air in an old-fashioned dogfight over Teachers Credit Union on Wednesday.
The hawk spent the night at Carole Riewe's bird hospital, recovering from bruising and shock.
Bob Babcock was driving down South Main Street and saw the whole thing.
"I heard them, the falcons, raising heck, and I looked up," he said. "I saw the big guy hovering, and one of the falcons hit him."
Red-tailed hawks are a third again larger than peregrine falcons.
Babcock, who owns a couple of Marathon gas stations downtown, saw the hawk fall and thought it landed on top of the Teachers Credit Union building.
He knew the peregrines were still fit and flying, so he just kept driving.
But someone else called Rich Ostrander, one of the falcon enthusiasts who watch the downtown birds, and told him a peregrine had fallen to the ground.
He and Riewe, a raptor rehabilitator, arrived to find the red-tailed hawk, not a peregrine, on the ground beside Teachers Credit Union.
It took a while for them to find a witness and determine what had happened.
The falcon chicks hatched downtown last year kept flying into buildings or ending up on the ground, so this year everyone is on the lookout for the big birds should they land on the ground.
Riewe said all three of the current crop of peregrine chicks were fine Wednesday afternoon.
One of them seems to have mastered flying, but the other two are still a bit unsteady.
"They need to practice," Riewe said.
She said the hawk is about a year old and probably doesn't have a nest of his own.
"He's never met up with anything like that before," Riewe said. "I'll let him out and tell him not to go downtown again. The peregrines are faster, and they've got kids to protect."
Peregrines have been clocked diving at 200 miles an hour.
