The sun hovered just above the horizon, ready to go down, a huge red shimmering ball; the sky was pale blue and empty, except for a high, bright gibbous moon in the east. I was on my way home, walking fast, fingers numb from cold, when I saw a flash of wings and the long tail of a Cooper\u2019s Hawk as it flew to the middle of a bare-limbed oak and perched there. All I could see as I walked toward it was a tangle of branches and a silhouette from behind, but as I got closer, it flew and passed straight in front of me at eye level, leaving a very brief but vivid image \u2013 almost as if it hung in the air and reflected the colors of the sunset \u2013 of blue-gray back and wings, glowing red breast, flashing eye, and long banded tail of dark and lighter gray, with a wide band of white rounding the end. It flew directly into the dark green depths of a large magnolia, where it remained, well hidden, even though I lingered until after the sun had gone down, and turned around several times to look back when I finally walked on up the street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The sun hovered just above the horizon, ready to go down, a huge red shimmering ball; the sky was pale blue and empty, except for a high, bright gibbous moon in the east. I was on my way home, walking fast, fingers numb from cold, when I saw a flash of wings and the long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}