“I wrote this a while back and decided to put it on my blog. Try to be the hawk in life”.

The Hawk and the Crows…..I spend a lot of days on the lake now and as I’m going about my day I can’t help but see the occasional hawk flying around the lakeshore and nesting in nearby trees. We have a very large population of red tailed hawks around the lake and a lot of times the hawks will use the lake as their hunting grounds. I love to watch the hawks swoop down for a floating fish from time to time and often times I can see them in the trees working together to hunt squirrels and small ground type rodents. They have a shrill scream and can be heard from a long way away when they are hunting or communicating and it’s easy for me to get distracted from fishing to watch the hawks. Numerous times I’ve seen the big hawks flying over the lake and sometimes hoovering around the big hawks are one or two black crows. The black crows seem to harass the hawk at every turn and they are relentless almost crashing into the hawk as they dive and swoop over the hawk during flight. The crow does not hunt and is not a predator and certainly no match for the hawk in battle. A couple of my observations during these hawk vs crow encounters are number one, if you watch closely you’ll see that the crows never attack the hawk from the front, it’s always from the rear and it’s always followed by a quick get away. Another observation is that the hawk pays little to no attention to the crows. The hawk goes on about his business and very rarely acknowledges the harassing crows existence. Keep in mind that the hawk is a master hunter and can kill it’s prey in flight with a quick swoop of it’s talons but it chooses to ignore the smaller weaker crows with focus and an even temper. My guess is that the hawk doesn’t like the taste of crow or there would be a lot less crows and a lot of fat hawks around there but they pay the crows no mind while in flight. After a few minutes of relentless attack, the crow gets no reaction and usually looses interest, moving on with no blood loss or feathers shed. If there is a moral to my observation, it would be to try and be like the hawk as you go through your life. There will always be a crow or two nipping at your heals, trying to throw you off course but pay them no mind and keep going with the focus and even temper of the hawk. Be the hawk in life, not the crow.-Jim Farmer